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heady's maine adventure: gavitas, blumats, and the wicked lobstah soil mix

Tonatiuh

its me Dave man open up the door...
ICMag Donor
Veteran
following this one close.i have the same height,and was thinking of switching from 1k hps to these same lights.i hope you kill it,good vibes.
peace-T-
 
Looking great man! I'm in upstate Ny where our laws are still bullshit. I get a little exited when I come across a grow closer to home. Looking forward to seeing more, keep up the good work!
 

BigBozat

Member
Ayuh, Wicked Good

Ayuh, Wicked Good

subbed...
:lurk:

... and cheering from the peanut gallery...

Always luvin Maine adventures (living here is an adventure in itself).
If you're ever wandering down Portland way, give a holler (tho, if you're sourcing from Bensons, you must be close anyway... as an aside: you might wanna check out Little River Compost's lobster & shellfish compost, might be a lower cost alternative to the Coast of Maine bagged lobster compost product, depending on where you can find it locally?)
 

heady blunts

prescription blunts
Veteran
ooof crazy back pain woke me up this morning. i feel bad for my neighbors because when it spikes i literally shout OW! or FUCK! with every movement.

luckily the other day a friend scrounged up a few dusty old nugs of some CBD flower for me to try. still had several bowl packs which i've just burned through in my little tube.

yo- i had never tried CBD before this week. let me just say THE HYPE IS REAL. also let me just say that there is definitely an effect and all that "it doesn't get you high" shit is bullshit. it's just a different feeling. i was extremely skeptical about the whole thing especially as states started proposing "CBD only" laws and whatnot, but i was pleasantly surprised to find smoking the flowers extremely satisfying. the high lasted me about 3 hours which is great for me. and i didn't need to smoke any other nugs as i was sort of expecting to have to.

the strain is harlesin which was from a feminized harlequin line by sin city. my buddy tested this plant and it came back around 2:1 cbd:thc at around 20% total cannabinoids.

while i wrote this the bong hits settled in. amazing relief! nice head too.

that's a good segue into yort's question: GENETICS! :dance013:

oh man there's always a lot going on in heady's garden. i'm a seed strumpet for sure and have compiled a pretty decent seed collection for a micro grower. i love pheno hunting and the major reason for always wanting more space is so i can search seeds and play with pollen :greenstars:

the first 8 plants we threw in were actually stuff that my buddy and i were gonna grow when we thought we were still gonna be micro growing for subsistence.

so i basically was going through my oldest seeds and being like, what should i pop before they lose any chance of germinating?

at the same time my buddy popped some of those sin city CBD seeds.

anyway the first 8 plants are:

sin city thunderstruck "birm's cut" (acdc s1)
---we're calling it birm's thunderstruck because my buddy @birmusmaximus did a great job selecting this beauty. there are a couple pics of her in late flower on his instagram. pretty flowers with some purple hues. tested at 1.5:1 cbd:thc---11%/7%=18% total cannabinoids. this plant will surely be getting out soon so people that need it will have access. I'm grateful to have been passed the cut so early in her life!

sin city thunderstruck (acdc s1)
---seed plant

sin city harlesin (harlequin x ac/dc)
---seed plant. sister plant to the one i described smoking above.

mandala ganesh (yamuna x afghan)
---2009 stock.

crazy monk genetics chunky cherry malawi f3 (deep chunk x (malawi x cherry bomb))
---seedbay freebie! CCM is originally from KOS.

breeder's choice moonflower (punto rojo x afghani)
---these were from an old friend on IC. he had worked it a bit. he said to f2 but i think maybe he meant f3. anyway taste and effect is colombian but they've got a bit of a tamed structure and flowering time. i grew some out in the closet in cali and the smoke was outstanding old school flavor so i'm looking forward to getting these big girls mature. i've got two sisters in right now.

swami's chem cross
---stan gave me these several years ago. he was very excited about the other lines i had at the time and these sort of seemed like an after thought, so they got put aside for several years. but i love chem and so does one of my good buds so we popped a bunch and i ended up with this gal. she has had a strong chem garlic and hot garbage thing since she was a young seedling. needless to say i'm very excited about this. paternity is in question. the pack was labeled (to x bmr) *or* (to x african) and in a PM he said it was (to x african) or (bmr x spacecheese), so who knows. he also never specified the cut, but i have a pic of the mom saved somewhere...

next post i'll get into what's coming up next, some proven gals and lots of fun new stuff!
 

heady blunts

prescription blunts
Veteran
okay i guess i can write that next post right now!

i thought i was getting up to go do some errands but that proved impossible so i'll just stay right here!

the CBD helps with the spasms but the pain has not disappeared entirely. i need to make some oil with CBD flowers so i can take a big dab in these moments. superdose therapy ftw!

okay where was i... next round....

actually the ganesh and the thunderstruck both decided to show male flowers. ganesh at about a week in and thunderstruck at two. i did have some light leaks that had not been taken care of, so i may have been responsible, but the rest of the plants are fine and we caught the new boys before they did any pollinatin'.

:peacock:

it's a bummer because politically i'm like "hell yeah! express your queer gender! love it!" but practically i can't allow any bananas in the flower room.

i have some cuts in perlite so maybe i'll try again (but probably not). the thunderstruck was a very vigorous plant, but i guess that's hemp for you.

anyway i replaced them with two of my cuts: CBDB #1 and SSSDH. both went 13+ weeks as seed plants, but i'm hoping they ripen a week or two faster as clones.

both are from f2s my friend and i made a while back of our most precious gear. his connoisseur sssdh from one of the early releases, and my carolina blue x digiberry bx1 from stank bros (thanks frank!)

we did the micro version of open pollination so a couple males and a few females were used in an effort to keep the genetic diversity open.

i did a seed run with 8 females of the cbdb f2's and 7 of them were excellent! the one that wasn't still smoked well but was the least vigorous.

here are my notes from when they were still flowering:

#1- very sativa expression, completely diff look than the sisters. 3x stretch, great side branching, even growth, sort of a musk and a cedar nose on top of a bit of dark fruit. i have a feeling i will really like the smoke on this one. lining up to be around 12 weeks. should yield well.

#2 - looks "kushy" to me. huge trich heads, big calyxes growing in like braided spears. stretched almost 3x but still has a WLD look to it. the leaflets are almost teardrop shaped, overlapping eachother at the widest parts but with space between them at the nexus. crazy kerosene stink. bag appeal will be off the charts.

#3 - "candy" pheno. the most intense undeniably blueberry smell, SWEET, like blueberry ice cream maybe. almost 3x stretch. nice spear buds. great branching with good buds all over. calyxes and trichs are smaller than #2 so poss less bag appeal, but i'm confident smell and flavor will be unrivaled, except poss by...

#4 - "floral" i've been calling it. as loud in blueberry as number three but less sweet, leaning more to a floral expression. it makes me think of like those hippy gums you buy at stores like whole foods. if you bought a bougie blueberry gum product at whole foods that's what this smells like. much shorter structure. only stretched like 1.5x

#5 - shortest, lowest yeilding, least fragrance, least appealing of the bunch. still frosty fire! chopped her early as HB needed some smoke. tester nugs dried real quick have impressive flavor. only gets me more excited about the rest of the sisters!

#6 - came out of nowhere looks a lot like that sour bubble, i'm thinking maybe the SB in the digiberry is making an appearance. good timing since the SB was lost! huge girthy buds on a compact frame (1.5x stretch). ridiculously frosty. almost crunches when you touch it. lighter coloration on the buds than the other plants. fast and heavy. nose is mostly hash, with a bit of dark fruit and a hint of sweetness.

#7 - fastest finisher. 1.5x stretch. same giant trichs and calyxes as the #2, but totally diff bud structure. more crowned. reminds me of the tops of pre-98 bubba but the rest of the bud is longer and skinnier than bub's fat golfballs. also hashy on the nose but it's gonna rival #2 on bag appeal and it finishes 2 weeks earlier. decent yield but nothng wild.

#8 - the runt. this came from the same seed as #7 but i never seperated them, so she was out-competed. i think it deserves at least another run because any evaluation from this round won't really be fair.

after curing and evaluating, the clear winner is #3, the candy pheno, which i am calling "cody" from now on in memory of a recently departed friend. he was an OG nut but he would have loved the euphoric, blues-busting, "spinning in a field of flowers" (as frank calls it) effect. it's also got a serious 3rd eye opening thing. like if cyclops from the xmen was a tibetan monk instead of some tom cruise type. spirit lazers.

although the cody cut represents the line the best out of the 8, it was not the only exceptional plant in the bunch. #6 was a crazy stout heavy yeilder with an intense nose tingling sweet limey thing going on. super sparkly. unfortunately the reveg didn't take.

i am giving #8, the runt, another run. i cut the little runt down at 7 weeks because i was running out of smoke. cut early and quick dried, she had the most intense flavor on the palate out of everyone! we'll see how she does in her own pot with some proper light.

my friend liked #2 a lot, so i kept the revegging cut going as it never quite died. finally after like 2 months in a 4" pot it's putting out new growth. i'd like to give ti to him so i can focus on the other keepers.

#1 the sativa 13 weeker is a super exceptional specimen as well. great branching, nice yeild, thick exotic fragrance, and a powerful high. the first two bong hits i took had me tripping like i ate a bag of mushrooms. lasted about 4 hours. did not get much accomplished that afternoon.

after smoking it for a couple weeks it's more functional. super delish with a long satisfying high.

i need a good nickname for that plant. i think i'll be keeping her around for a long time.

the SSSDH is gorgeous limonene heaven. smelled like a lemon head candy in flower and like roasted lemon now that it's cured. great uplifting, upbeat high lasts about 4 hours no paranoia or raciness.

here they are cooperating reasonably well in a too-hot 400w closet in some very budget recycled soil. the 10x10 with gavitas and custom mix is a serious upgrade lol.

cody
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sssdh
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cody in the new mix a couple weeks ago
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sssdh in the new mix a couple weeks ago
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heady blunts

prescription blunts
Veteran
man that's one heck of lot of charcoal for 2 yards.... 4 x 17 =68lb + 25lb of biochar. seems like allotta amendments for only 3 bales of peat with all those full sacks going in heady

woohoo! yea i was aiming for like 10% total volume as biochar. i filled up a 45 gallon tote with the crushed charcoal so that's about 6 cubic feet. if a yard is 27 cuft and i made two, then i went a bit over! but i think the 10% number is more for the fine grit biochar. i leave a lot of pieces in the 1/4--1/2" size to act as an aeration amendment, and they surely function differently than the dust. the fine char particles bond with soil particles and promote good soil aggregation. it's lovely stuff.

if you want to use biochar just make sure you "charge" it first. i used neptune's harvest fish and seaweed diluted at the ratio recommended for compost starter. any well balanced soluble organic fertilizer should work, just use the ratio recommended on the back of the bottle (full strength would be far too much!)

i've also heard of people charging their biochar with ACT (that's how jeremy at BAS does it apparently) and that bagged biochar product i got was cut with basalt and sold as "remineralized biochar."

How you liking those 10 gal smarties? I'm thinking bout making the switch to all smartpots for my indoor, already use em outside.

Great looking ladies in there, cant wait till you get some more pics and get that thing running full steam, harvests every month then (half flower room)?

any link to the room design you based this off of? whats the benefitS?

Thanks and best of luck! I'll be watching!

LOVE smartpots. they just mesh well with living soil and blumats. i've used a lot of the smartpot brand containers, including the 10 gallon with handles, but this time i got the geo pot brand and i'm finding them a bit nicer. thicker material, stronger seams, and much stronger handles, plus i think they're a tiny bit cheaper.

i'm running lots of diff strains so it's not gonna be a perfect 8 week perpetual, but i'm trying to stagger harvests in an attempt to make trimming and processing a little more manageable. i'll probably always be growing at least a couple seed plants per run too, so there will always be those variables to contend with.

room design is based off my wild imagination, and of course the thousands of hours of reading i've done here! i love engineering DIY and horticulture so designing and building the room is a lot of fun for me. i try to take advantage of the successes and failures of others in the community who have shared their experiences for our collective benefit. i'm so grateful for this community, and as an autodidact i couldn't have gotten here without this great collection of knowledge to draw upon!

also i read all the tech specs and everything for equipment. i had a long back and forth with gavita's support team before i even purchased the lights. they sent me schematics and sample room plans that i used to design my light placement.

so yea i started with the footprint of the space, drafted the whole thing out to scale on graph paper. came up with a great design, then we had to move one wall 8 inches. scrapped the whole thing and started over. came up with this design. wanted to use gavitas. wanted to use a lung room. knew i'd be in living soil with blumats. knew i wanted to stay legal and compliant, so kept the plant count low.

now we wait and see if it pays off! temps are gonna be an issue for sure if i can't get the AC taken care of. the design called for a 4 ton minisplit but we're running out of cash. we've got two portables on loan from friends in the meantime and we've got the lights turned down to 500w keeping ambient temps at just under 80 for now.

following this one close.i have the same height,and was thinking of switching from 1k hps to these same lights.i hope you kill it,good vibes.
peace-T-

tona great to have you. i lurked your thread hard while i was suffering prohibition.

the gavitas are awesome but as i just mentioned above, gotta have the AC to back it up! they're very efficient and the ballasts stay pretty cool but it's all blasting away inside the flower room so temps gotta be controlled for sure.

if plant count wasn't an issue someone could totally run tons of shorter plants in the same height space with them fully blasting at 1000w (or even 1150: turnt up!)

basically gavita support told me minimumb distance bulb to canopy at 1k = 90 cm, at 750 = 70 cm, and at 600 = 60 cm.
 

heady blunts

prescription blunts
Veteran
more on the next round:

also coming up we've got:

mandala beyond the brain (colombian sativa/haze x satori P1)
---got two sisters. also kept one boy.

DGS dieselrella (nycd x c99)
---2009 stock

CBDB 8
---the runt, not so runty anymore.

cody (CBDB 3)
---gorgeous.

CT OG
---a cut my friend found and has held for several years now. found in an early cali con tahoe og s1 pack from 2009 or 2010 i think. gorgeous OG. can be cut as early as 7 weeks. i'd love to try to get her to 10 but we always seem to chop by week 8 cause she's looked ready for two weeks by then lol. insane hash. winner winner chicken dinner. the most popular mean girl in our line up.

sour bubble x (bkgk bx1)
---made this with a gorgeous lime soda sour bubble female from bog's bx3 i think. last bean in the 10 pack popped years after i bought it and she was the gem. lost her on the reveg, but not before she made several ounces of gorgeous bud and a few dozen seeds for me. did a single branch pollination with the bkgk's love dust and this is the prettiest one so far. still have a few more beans left too. i'm hoping for purple sour bubble nuggets.

ct og x (bkgk bx1)
---same dad as above. got two brothers of this that look extremely promising as well. my buddy and i are working on a breeding project with ct og in tandem, so lots of fun things in the future for these babies...

"pre-91 OG" bagseed
---my buddy got a bag sold to him as "pre-91 OG" which was really funny timing it was like 2 weeks after SUPA started that thread here lol. anyway it was good pot and he was still in micro mode so he planted it. the gal we got from it reeks of mycerene and is quite vigorous so we're gonna see what she can do.
 

heady blunts

prescription blunts
Veteran
welcome SH! this certainly is a bit roomier than the old closets!

I think having to start at a micro scale was a good learning experience for me. my partner is an old friend with a background in biology and plant science, but this will be his first canna grow. im like, "pretty nice first grow, buddy!" I like to spoil my friends anyway. after a year 's worth of crop cycles hopefully he'll be feeling confident in taking over the whole space.

I'm always gonna love a good closet grow tho! here are some shots from the old bare bulb closet for posterity.

picture.php
picture.php
 

Scrappy4

senior member
Veteran
welcome SH! this certainly is a bit roomier than the old closets!

I think having to start at a micro scale was a good learning experience for me. my partner is an old friend with a background in biology and plant science, but this will be his first canna grow. im like, "pretty nice first grow, buddy!" I like to spoil my friends anyway. after a year 's worth of crop cycles hopefully he'll be feeling confident in taking over the whole space.

I'm always gonna love a good closet grow tho! here are some shots from the old bare bulb closet for posterity.

View Image View Image

Great to see ya back at it' friend!

I agree small grows are great for getting experience. My current room is basically a scaled up design of my old grow box. Old habits die hard.

I'm interested in how you handle the heat. Although for winter it looks like you will have a heated floor upstairs, lol.
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
:respect:

Cody looks like a great blend of the CB and the Digi. Very nice balance of the two. You taking her 9wk?

I've got to read the thread more heavily...and then I'll comment more - but - it really is a joy to have you back!!



dank.Frank
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Oh, yes, question...

I saw you listing BKGK on your list as a daddy? That from old original Retardo stock??



dank.Frank
 

Piff Rhys Jones

🌴 Hugging Trees 🌴
Veteran
wanted to use a lung room.

Very nice HB!

I see you mention a lung room, do you have additional carbon scrubbers in the separate room as well as the one in the main room? Any other reason for a lung room as opposed to venting straight out?

Good luck, tagged for the show! :tiphat:

Peace
 

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