Blimey's Ghetto Perpetual

[Blimey]

Hello boys and girls....are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

So....my Free Tibet run down in Somaland has now finished...and produced some superior smoke....the trim of which has just been QWISO'ed....

But, as always, the last bud is history, and it's what's coming up that's important.....so here we are in the UK forum.

My grow is pretty much run on the basis of least possible cost, due to my current financial position, but I like to show that this doesn't preclude producing some decent smoke...

So the setup:

Veg cab is an old cat-carrier, and has 4 x 20W 2700K CFLs. (Old photo)

Flower cab is 18" x 18" x 28" approx, and has a 200W 2700K CFL. (Old photo)

Nutes and soil media vary from time to time. Currently using FITO Citrus Feed (5-7-7 + micros) for veg and early flower, Canna PK13/14 for bloom, and black treacle for carb boosting.

Currently most advanced in flower is a GP12 - a cross of my own creation (Nirvana Northern Lights x Nirvana California Orange) x Sensi Mexican Sativa.

Day 46 of 12/12 with 1 day veg.

Now for the flower room as a whole:

Back row (L-R): GP12, Paradise Spoetnik #1, another GP12. Yeah - I know you can't see them well.

Centre: Mexican Sativa (fresh out of veg), Cali-O x Mexican Sativa, Afghani x NL

Front: (all fresh out of veg): Cali-O x Mexican Sativa, Nirvana White Widow, GP12

The cold has been playing merry hell with everything....currently waiting on everything in flower except the big GP12 to show sex.....I think this Afghani x NL will turn out to be a boy....but I may be wrong. Notice the purpling due to the low temps...

Till next time....stay safe and warm!

 

[BioPart]

beautiful I love your plants Blimey. Free Tibet looks verry nice, and the new crop is promising.

Good Luck

 

[ArcticBlast]

hell yeah dude i'll tag along, too! even though i'm not in the UK lol

ArcticBlast

 

[Blimey]

Biopart - thanks man! Always nice to have you around.

ArcticBlast - hey man...everybody's welcome...it's all cyberspace anyway lol....less danger of this thread disappearing off to page 5 after a couple of days in this forum. It can take forever to find a grow diary sometimes.

Plants are definitely drinking less in this cold weather. May have overfed the GP12 a bit....got some leaf tip issues, but she's also eating up her lower fan leaves....guess the small pot doesn't help.

 

[JamieShoes]

I'm already lovin it

 

[Blimey]

Welcome aboard, Jamie! I hope you had a nice weekend at various airports....

Spoetnik #1, a most mysterious strain.....fem only by Paradise....my speculation is that it's an S1 of the Sputnik 1.0 clone. Which would make it Apollo 13 x Black Russian....if anyone can confirm or deny this....feel free to chime in.

Whatever, she's a finicky gal, doesn't like the cold, doesn't like wet feet, doesn't like this soil mix (compared with other plants) and has been droopy-leaved since day 1, although she may be a naturally droopy sort of gal...we shall see. I have breeding plans for her, depending on which stud steps up to the plate.

The GP12 is frosting up nicely, and ultra-branchy.....early test bud taken in the wee small hours last night was most impressive....a small nuclear explosion in the frontal lobe. Almost no smell....just a hint of something vaguely floral.....can't quite put my finger on it yet.

She has stopped stretching about 3 inches from the top of the cab - the other GP12's in the cab have had significantly longer veg, so we shall see if they can max out just at the ceiling (edit - assuming they are girls!), which is my aim. Hopefully she should start putting on some weight to go with the frost.

 

[colonelcrackers]

Blimey, how many days in is the GP12 that you popped the tester off of?

 

[Blimey]

Last night was day 47...with 1 day veg..so she's going to go a while.

She went into flower two days before this pic was taken (she's at the front).

 

[RudeDog]

Looking good dood....We've got virtually the same size cabs. Just finished building veg cab, swithing on tonight...Got some sprouted bagseed to go in.

I'll be watchin ur grow fella

 

[ArcticBlast]

hey blimey, i had a buddy that grew out sputnik, but i dont think it was fem? anyway, he said the lineage was exactly what you think yours is : A13 x Black Russian, but take that for what it's worth i liked it a lot

lookin good, dude!
ArcticBlast

 

[Blimey]

RudeDog - thanks for checking in, man...good luck with your grow! Feel free to ask any questions. Not that I'm an expert....always learning with every plant I grow...but here on icmag, I can be confident of getting plenty of advice when I need it!

ArcticBlast - yeah....I think it was originally a strain by TGA_Subcool....which I guess is why Paradise changed the name.....maybe your buddy had their seeds and not Paradise? I don't know if Paradise do a regular version....but the only ones on the boo are fem only.

In any case, I'm going to pollinate it with something, depending on which plants show balls, and see where we go from there. I love chucking pollen!

I've never grown any Jack strains, or any of their many many derivatives, so it will be interesting to see what I get. But the whole "grows and flowers like an indica, but with a superior sativa buzz" is really what caught my eye. We shall see.....

Temps have finally lifted by a few degrees....we had rain yesterday...the snow hasn't all melted yet, but hopefully the worst is over, and the plants should start growing again!

 

[VerdantGreen]

hey blimey it all looks good - i need a lesson on how to grow sog plants from seed. how long did you veg the mexi sat. for before you flowered it? and when did count veg as starting? - from germination or first repot? - what size pots do you use for flower?
im having a nightmare trying to flower 4 of my Black forrest hybrids in one of my quarters - too tall.

 

[daddy fingaz]

Hey Blimey that GP12 looks nice, also like your great big luminous catbox...defo sounds like something straight from planet gong!!

 

[Blimey]

DF - thanks, man! I'm actually thinking of upgrading to a bigger wire mesh cat carrier....The GP12 is working out very well so far. Early tests on popcorn have been surprisingly potent - just hoping she stops eating her fans and eating her feed instead!

Live (well, almost) from a great big luminous catbox somewhere on Planet Gong...

The little ones are happy mere millimetres away from the 20W bulbs....when they touch, they burn...and you can see the odd scorch mark on various plants.

VG - welcome!

The Mexi Sat in the middle row in post #1 was vegged for 18 days. My definition of the start of veg is when the first 3-bladed leaf appears. She was a very slow grower under the 4x20W compared to other plants.....the ones I grew last year under 200W from scratch were much more vigorous...guess it's a strain that likes a LOT of light - not surprising for a sativa-dom that's intended for outdoors.

This current specimen seems to be a very indica pheno, looking at the leaf shape...she's really taking off now under the 200W....I'll take a photo when the lights come on tonight.

The one I flowered last year.....FYI....had 4 days veg (under 200W), stayed in 1.4L start to finish, and finished at 2ft exactly, which is just scraping the ceiling when adding in the height of the container.

By and large, I don't up-pot at all....my Free Tibet was an exception, as I had plenty of space in the flower cab, and I felt under a bit of pressure to do the best showcase of the strain I could.

As for my SOG setup generally.....I'm always trying to gradually dial in strains, purely by experimentation. So the first time I run a strain, I'll flower very small, and see how big she gets....repeat with longer veg until I can see what they need to best fill up the height. Later on, I will add experiments with topping and training.

But it's a long process, as I'm always running a mix of strains and crosses...it's been 11 months with this cab, which is no time at all, really.

Re your BF hybrids.....if they are showing anything like the vigour my GP12 has, I'm not surprised you are having height problems....I put the big one in flower at 3cm tall, and it's about 21" now (excluding pot). I suggest some serious bondage or topping...and if you ever need a tester.... *cough, cough*

I don't particularly worry about plants growing taller than the light......I don't use a reflector, and light bounces off the walls OK....I could raise the light even further, but I'm concerned about the effective light penetration of the CFL for the smallest plants at the bottom if I do that. Maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic about the capabilities of my 200??? I guess it's an area that I need more experimentation with.

 

[JamieShoes]

just a thought, but how about a few fish tank style flouresants for side lighting? I think mine is by "growlux" seemed like a good omen

 

[Blimey]

The long, thin ones?

I'll keep my eyes open for what I can find....

So many things on my shopping list.....this hobby/obsession of ours is so much more than getting a light, some potting compost and some bagseed!!!

 

[zdb]

Amazing. I want to show this thread to all the people complaining about the price of weed in the UK at the moment. Great buds

 

[Blimey]

zdb - thanks! Show away.....that's what this thread is all about!

OK....First things first......Sensi Mexican Sativa..or as I call her "#27"....I have such a way with names....

She's more round-leaved than the other two I've grown before....which looked more like this GP12...imaginatively named "#29", which has quite distinctive "spiky" leaves. All my Mex-sat hybrids share the same father, who had this trait in spades...although all his offspring are much bigger-leaved than him, probably due to hybrid vigour.

Now we have a demonstration of the Blimey QuikDry ™ speed drying process in action.

Here, at day 34 of 12/12 is my Afghani x NL, which has still to definitively show sex....but I think that lump is a primordial testicle......

in any case, it seems to resemble more than anything else a Thai plant I saw in an old thread by Elevator Man - from the leaf shape...so I guess some deep recessive genes are in play...or just plain Nirvana genetics up the wazoo

Last but not least....the big GP12 is starting to brown on the pistil front, which means very little when it comes to ripeness.

Whew! I need a smoke after all that....luckily I have some just fresh off the bulb!

Take care, and be safe!!!

 

[JamieShoes]

looks good in here mate... what were your thoughts after leaving the tibet so long in terms of ripeness... happy? didnt make any discernable difference? or preferred stuff you'd previously taken earlier?

 

[Blimey]

Hmmm.....that's difficult to answer.....potency was definitely greater....but the specialist "being cradled by a warm giant", combined with "total ego destruction" effects seemed less pronounced.....but that may be an effect of tolerance build-up.....where I built up more of a tolerance to the specialist nature of the high rather than the standard stone.

I should have let my body cleanse itself before trying the finished product....but f*ck that, I'm a weak weak man. If I've got weed, I'm smoking it. I envy people who can just leave it in the jar for the weekend.

So....in my experience, the earlier buds had the more "therapeutic" effect, if that is why you would grow the strain, but I definitely got more stoned with the later buds.....On pushing it one night, I almost got to hyperspace, but not quite...like Chuck Yeager trying to reach space in his X-plane...I have smoked weed in the past (late 90s in USA) which 1/3rd a joint just destroyed me totally, and this was not in that league by any means. Oh to know what strain that was....

If I had to pick between the two......probably the earlier buds...but ideally I'd do another phased harvest, yet with enough bud from other plants in hand so I could give all specimens a proper cure.

But with a zillion strains to choose to grow, it makes sense to grow one with a specialist effect, purely for that effect....if that makes sense....

EDIT: Happy? Yes....both for the weed I got, and for the amount I learnt.....especially as I got the seeds on sale....probably wouldn't have bought them at £66 for 10.