Aphotic's No Till- Indoor- Raised Bed- Experience & Pseudo Knowledge Emporium

Okey dokey,

It's time for me to start a new journal, I would have stuck with my old journal, but I couldn't change the title. Anyways, this round I'll be popping some landrace beans, Afghan Kush. I'll be throwing a few of my favorite strains, along with everything that pops up from the seeds, into my flower room. I was going to do an open pollination, but now I think I'm more set on hand pollination. I'll be making pollen bags for the males, and hopefully containing, collecting, and pollinating select branches, of selected strains. This will be largely a seed run, so some of the pollen will be mixed together, and applied to the afghan females. I am also sprouting seeds collected from my last run, happy little accidents

Here are some pics of the seedlings, 5 days since they hit the soil, no prior germination, all 10 planted germinated. They've all fully breached the soils surface. The first three seeds broke through after two days! The afghan seeds are almost a year old, and were kept in a cool dark cabinet.





A Nieghbor took some cuttings for me of a few strains, Cannatonic, American Beauty, and Queen Bee. Unfortunately I didn't have time to process then for a few days, they sat in cups of water, and they had bugs. Then I mixed my organic pest dip too strong, after too little sleep and fried them. It will be a miricle if any survive. But I've rescued cuttings in far worse shape in the past. Under normal conditions I typically have a 100% success rate with cuttings.



Thank you for stopping by,
Aphotic

Let me show y'all what I'll be working with!

In my flower room I'm running 2- 1k hortilux super HPS in xxxl air cooled hoods, on a light mover. I couldn't remember the gallon size of my beds, so I just measured them. Each one is 154 gallons and there are 3 of them. I custom made the beds and rolling carts they sit on. Each bed has its own trellis if needed, which makes watering and maintenance a breeze. The room is taped and sealed air tight if I close off the air intake, so if in the future I want to run co2 I'm ready. I have an 8" can fan for exhaust. An air conditioner, and a dehumidifier. I also have several smaller beds in milk crates for benificials, aloe vera, comfery, borage, alfalfa, rye grass, chamomile, and a few others. I also have a 65gal act brewer I made for all my watering needs. It can be used to brew just about anything.

Here is my soil mix:

So each batch makes about 8.5 gal of soil if I remember correctly, which is about what I can mix by hand at a time without killing myself, and I literally mix it with my hands, to ensure a thorough mix. (I can't wait to get a cement mixer).

40c peat
20c compost
20c WC
20c perlite
20c pumice
10c biochar
4c silica sand
4c granite grit w/fines)
1c red lake DE w/calcium bentonite
1/2c sodium bentonite
1/2c azomite
1/2c oyster shell flower
1/2c kelp meal
1/2c alfalfa meal
1/2c neem meal
1/2c crab meal
I also add in some powdered beneficial bacteria I had, and myco fungi.
I wet it all with fresh act and let it sit in bins for a few weeks bofore use.

Everything is organic


I'm running an organic cover crop, which includes barley, alfalfa, three clovers, vetch, rye grass, and many other things, I let them all fight it out for dominance. As a mulch I have leaf litter from a mature Oregon forest on my property. Oak chips and dust, dead cover crop from last cycle, stems and leaves from the last harvest just got laid down, along with a fresh seeding of cover crop. I cut the plants down to the soil line and I'll let the root balls decompose in the beds. I think that will happen quickly, as the small bamboo stakes I used to prop up some of my plants had completely decomposed below the soil line.

Here's some pics






I still need to rearrange my control center and paint the board white, I added some components and took others away mid grow, so its messy, but safe. I also need to give the room a good cleaning before the next cycle comes in.

Now for the mom room!

In the mom room, I'm running two 600w hortilux blue MH, one is in an air cooled hood, the others in a normal hood. Both are on light movers. I'm also running a 4'x2' 6bulb t5 ho fixture, with red and blue bulbs (why not). The moms are currently in milk crate fabric beds, and the desperately need a manicure, I'm planning on switching to bonsai when I have time. I'm running an air conditioner\dehumidifier, and a 6" can fan exhaust fan. The mom room houses the timers for both rooms.

Here are some pics!






Again, I need to tie up some wires here and there, and some ducting. I'll use my down time for some house keeping in the rooms.

Lookin good over here!!

Mind if I pull up a chair?

By all means! Welcome to my little corner of madness.

So, I cleaned the flower room today, and made a change to the orientation of my hoods, when I first hung them I had them hung socket to socket, so both bulbs were in the center, if that makes sense. Today took them down and switched them so the sockets were hung away from each other, I did this to better spread out the light cast by them over my beds.

I also, for the first time, am using the dimming feature on my ballasts in the flower room, I switched them both from 1k to 600w, the bulbs are throwing far more yellow than before, this is OK, its just for the cover crop, and other amendment plants still in the room. I wouldn't want to grow cannabis in this fashion. I am worried that there might be a possibility that I'm damaging my bulbs, has anyone heard of anything like that being an issue with dimmable ballasts?

I took some better pics of my beds, so y'all can see the mulch, and my mushrooms are back! Also the first seeds of the cover crop are sprouting. You can also see my comfrey coming up in the second bed in thee last pic, I had planted seeds, which never came up, so I went out to my garden and took a root cutting from one out there, after a week and a half, it broke the surface.

I took somersomer brighter pics of the seedlings today, they are happily truckin along, its now been 6 days since I threw them in the soil, ungerminated.





I know this hasn't been the most exciting update, but I promise, things will liven up!

Oh, did I mention the portion of the house where my grow rooms are is haunted, I'm pretty sure it lives in the bathroom of my drying\work room, this is also where I cure my buds, in a cabinet. Ghost weed!

One more thing, look at the middle pic of the seedlings, I applied some fresh aloe Vera tea to the seedlings yesterday, kind of a dumb move, as it could have hurt them, anyways, look at their stalks, they got wavy. Weird right? They weren't like that yesterday, before the application. Also I sprayed the leaves of my moms with the aloe tea, and afterwards, as coot said, they propped up, but also the fringes of the leaves turned up, I'm pretty sure this isn't an indication of a sudden rapid growth spurt, rather the plants reacting to the sudden increase in humidity, after everything completely dried out, everything went back to normal.

One more, one more thing, I'm sure many of you already own, or have read this book. If you haven't it's worth a look, even though it was published 36 years ago, there are insights in it, that are just now coming to the forefront of cannabis cultivation.

Marijuana Botany
By Robert Connell Clarke

i guess i found the way to youre thread...great thread...thx a lot...
your scrogging gridframes are also very nice..

what is this topping on the seedlings...silica sand ?


beside the no till thing..my next grow starts soon...i got 1,44m²....how many 11 liter( 2,90589gallon)or 14 liter should i put in....12 or 9 ?
i wanted to put 3 *sweedseets S.A.D(black domina cut from 90ies), 3*c99, 3*PURE AK and maybe 2 or 3 skunk special from female seeds...when i don't top cut ,maybe i should be able to put 12...but i think 9 bring more yield cause plants got space...
what are you thinking...

and last time again...i really appreciate youre opinion...thx a lot...
i also found aloe vera thread....great...i used biobizz activera but a real aloevera plant is much better i guess..

cheers

wasgedn said:

i guess i found the way to youre thread...great thread...thx a lot...
your scrogging gridframes are also very nice..

what is this topping on the seedlings...silica sand ?


beside the no till thing..my next grow starts soon...i got 1,44m²....how many 11 liter( 2,90589gallon)or 14 liter should i put in....12 or 9 ?
i wanted to put 3 *sweedseets S.A.D(black domina cut from 90ies), 3*c99, 3*PURE AK and maybe 2 or 3 skunk special from female seeds...when i don't top cut ,maybe i should be able to put 12...but i think 9 bring more yield cause plants got space...
what are you thinking...

and last time again...i really appreciate youre opinion...thx a lot...
i also found aloe vera thread....great...i used biobizz activera but a real aloevera plant is much better i guess..

cheers

Click to expand...

Yes, it is silica sand, it keeps down mold, and discourages fungus gnats, and it offers a little bit of water retention to the soil, along with some light reflection. My father in-law, uses silica sand by itself to start all of his seeds in his nursery business.

The big beds in the flower room are made of pondliner underlayment fabric (made from recycled plastic bottles), with a PVC pipe frame. Using the large beds is one of the best decisions ive ever made in the grow room, so much less work, less watering, and my plants are a lot happier. It creates a more stable environment, and greater soil depth than the smaller pots. The pots in my mom room are made out of the same thing, but they sit in milk crates, to hold their shape.

If you don't top, go with 12. I just started experimenting with aloe, we will see how it turns out, by growing my own I get an endless supply for free, and free is good! What is your soil mix? Have you had a chance to check out Microbe Mans site yet?

What grit silica are you using? 30 ?

A little oatmeal sprinkled in with your mulch will loosely bind it together resulting in fewer hiding places for gnats.

Very nice setup!!! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks!

I think its 24-26, I'll go look in a bit. My father in law uses 16 for propagation. Bentonite will also bind the surface, and isn't a food for fungi. This time I didn't add any binder because it made watering problematic.

h.h. said:

What grit silica are you using? 30 ?

A little oatmeal sprinkled in with your mulch will loosely bind it together resulting in fewer hiding places for gnats.

Very nice setup!!! Thanks for sharing.

Click to expand...

Its 40, I used to get 24-26, but I guess I picked this up on accident. Fine by me. Here's a question, if you use silica sand, granite fines, and DE, what's the point in buying a silica product additive? Yet I see so many using these products and buying a silica additive, I can't remember the names of the products, but they sell like hot cakes.

OK, I've been thinking about this for weeks now, whether or not to start my white widow seeds, it would mean more work. If I'm not careful I could have a male white widow contaminate my afghan pollen. But, I'm bored, this always happens to me at the start of a cycle. I'll sit in my rooms, and poke my plants, urging them to grow faster, or to do something exciting. Its always hurry up and wait, then boom, ahhhhh so much to do, help, I'm sinking.

So yes, I'll pop the white widow beans, I'll cull the male clones in the flower room as soon as they show, hopefully I can catch them before they get in there, and I'll try to resist the temptation of growing the males out too. I'll have some backup clones waiting in the wings to take the male white widows place in flower, and all will be right with the world, famous last words.

Almost forgot, I threw 8 different varieties of basil seed, including holy basil, into my beds last night, and a few Rosemary seeds, they'll probably get over taken by everything else, but we'll see.

White Widow has hit the soil! I'm pretty excited about it, I've never had it before, but I've heard good things, and I'm partial to the older strains.

In the cups and ready to rock!


I got white widow from a local organic breeder, I really dig the packaging, the tin was sealed in a bag, and the seed vile was also bagged.

about microbe man site..i am on it right now....got the most time in the morning cause i water my vegetables and other plants in evening...
really cool to see the effektive mikroorganismen there....i used 4 times tea....2 times with molasses,wormhumus,effektive mikroorganismen,terrafert boden(ground),terra preta granulat and guano or Bodengold(multikraft.com) and 2 times without molasses...

im so curious about the WW hehe...

So, I have a C02 meter in my flower room, but I'm not running C02. I switched to no till last cycle, and while my room was full of plants, I averaged around 400ppm. Now that the crops been cut, I'm maintaining 700-800ppm?

I have a small amount of plants still in the room that I use as amendments for my soil, so I keep the lights on, and everything running in between cycles. I exchange my air in the room on a timer, as my air conditioner takes care of the temps. Anyways, in between air exchanges, the c02 levels maintain between 700-800ppm. The air drawn in from outside is around 400. My soil is very alive, with lots of mulch. My best guess is that my soil is generating c02.

Anyone else encountering this?

wasgedn said:

about microbe man site..i am on it right now....got the most time in the morning cause i water my vegetables and other plants in evening...
really cool to see the effektive mikroorganismen there....i used 4 times tea....2 times with molasses,wormhumus,effektive mikroorganismen,terrafert boden(ground),terra preta granulat and guano or Bodengold(multikraft.com) and 2 times without molasses...

im so curious about the WW hehe...

Click to expand...

Me too, I feel like a kid before Christmas!

oh....beanfarms say ww originally was made by greenhouse...nice transparent move..
but it was made by shantibaba as he was one of the owners of greenhouse......
but really nice from beanfarms that they did this elucidation....

i ll be back later..btw i didnt finish the microbe text yet , but this article is so ultra...thx a lot...