Levitationofme
Active member
It's handy guide.
That guy is a foliar addict and it's interesting.
That guy is a foliar addict and it's interesting.
-
Happy Birthday ICMag! Been 20 years since Gypsy Nirvana created the forum! We are celebrating with a 4/20 Giveaway and by launching a new Patreon tier called "420club". You can read more here.
-
Important notice: ICMag's T.O.U. has been updated. Please review it here. For your convenience, it is also available in the main forum menu, under 'Quick Links"!
Makeshift Greenhouse Problems
- Thread starter brown_thumb
- Start date
Actually I don't so much suggest it, as it's a matter of your thread being interesting and it makes me think about interesting farming stuff. I grew up in a fish/pets/plants shop environment for several years, my mom and dad ran it among other stuff they did, so I tend to be the kind who will find something to say to someone if it seems to me they're interested in technology. And it helps people who aren't really gonna build what you or I build exactly, to find a really technology-dense thread a lot of times.
Your thread and demonstrations are really good it seems to me, I admit not reading all the way through everything,
but it's a very cool thing to watch you step through it, because it's like books I have read in some aspects.
I think it's a tendency to see people having interesting threads, and try to think of something to make the thread's overall content larger yet remain contextually interesting.
I was kind of trying to let on how hard the stuff is to really deal with in regard to the filtration. I think when most folks see "Oh yeah kinda paint through your sprayer" they kinda say.. uH.. that was stuff they used before they invented wood, right?" LoL.
And, like.. you have to go buy the bag of lime, and then after a few weeks, the bag's not good for it any more due to the CO2 outgassing or something I think? It's like.. uH.. can we make this stuff any more weird to handle? Lemme guess, when you pour them together it gets hot, and fumes, and is poisonous...
"Well... yeah."
LoL, for real, you guys, it's like so help me.. LoL freakin eye of newt.
But it's like drinking beer or something, it's a lot of steps to learn to hide the bottles, get the smell off your breath, not puke the first ten times you drink some, but somehow, - you are more satisfied because somehow you've come through some deal where.. now, you can say, "Oh yeah, I use that difficulty causing, obnoxious, nasty, poisonous shit.. All the TiMe..." LoLo..
It's like.. the stuff is sO 1800s. But like, there's one more kinda funny thing about it I didn't understand till I actually boiled eye of newt, and all this stuff, and there was like... shit goin on from the 1800s, but-
in your life, have you ever walked by somebody's yard, and on some of the plants, it looks exactly like, someone just took a paint sprayer, and painted the plants sorta eggshell blue?
If you see this and there's not a single thing painted around there, except these plants, then - chances are, this stuff is Bordeaux mix.
It looks for all the world, almost exactly like, once you get right up on it, someone was cleaning the sprayer out for a commercial sprayer, and shot the watery light blue-green paint onto the plants.
I had a neighbor whose yard I passed and it was on his plants, like.. on some roses I think- like... our plant doesn't get it, ok? But there's this stuff, I dunno if you ever farmed vegetables? It's called fire blight, yO, and that shit is like... it's like a terminal case of bacterial spank for a LOT of legal foodstuff plants- trees, apples, man you name it - tomatoes, cucumbers, there's just skads of plants, that are susceptible to this fire blight business.
It was the bacterial stuff I made some for, and I have to go back and correct what I said, I stonered. Actually there was fungus I was trying to control, too, but anyway LoL - I think I misrepresented somewhat, referring to fire blight as fungal.
Anyway I was cruising by my neighbor's house and saw this stuff on his plants, like.. roses I guess, and I was like.... w..t...heck hMMm.
So - I was going down the road, and I see some more, just like this, on ANOTHER guy's fence, over beside his house - plant types unknown, right? So I was driving by somewhere ELSE, and saw this AGAIN.. and I was like.. wtF yO, who's going around a whole city spraying that stuff on peoples' fences, and their trees? ?
So for years you know, I saw this going on, and recently saw this spate of eggshell colored water splashed all over peoples' yards, and was looking at my own plants, trying to figure out how much it helped, and all this, with the wilting, the critters, potential for hiding that it's weed- like I say when it's in veg, you can spray enough on it that when it's around the other vegetables it helps hide it- and I had this big "!Eureka!" moment, where I felt like a fool. . . for years, Bordeaux mix had kinda slipped my mind, and there it was, -boom, right in my own yard, before I realized it. I was spraying it on my plants and I realized it because I had to make some to save some of my wife's trees, originally, then the garden was going up in fire blight flames, till I sprayed everything.
Anyway that's my story and I'm stickin' to it, your thread really does remind me of the books about various hobbies I've read through the years, in my own pet shop, and just everywhere till recently most information stopped being transmitted through hobby books.
Peace, good growin, good luck, don't let the lifers harsh your buzz!
Your thread and demonstrations are really good it seems to me, I admit not reading all the way through everything,
but it's a very cool thing to watch you step through it, because it's like books I have read in some aspects.
I think it's a tendency to see people having interesting threads, and try to think of something to make the thread's overall content larger yet remain contextually interesting.
I was kind of trying to let on how hard the stuff is to really deal with in regard to the filtration. I think when most folks see "Oh yeah kinda paint through your sprayer" they kinda say.. uH.. that was stuff they used before they invented wood, right?" LoL.
And, like.. you have to go buy the bag of lime, and then after a few weeks, the bag's not good for it any more due to the CO2 outgassing or something I think? It's like.. uH.. can we make this stuff any more weird to handle? Lemme guess, when you pour them together it gets hot, and fumes, and is poisonous...
"Well... yeah."
LoL, for real, you guys, it's like so help me.. LoL freakin eye of newt.
But it's like drinking beer or something, it's a lot of steps to learn to hide the bottles, get the smell off your breath, not puke the first ten times you drink some, but somehow, - you are more satisfied because somehow you've come through some deal where.. now, you can say, "Oh yeah, I use that difficulty causing, obnoxious, nasty, poisonous shit.. All the TiMe..." LoLo..
It's like.. the stuff is sO 1800s. But like, there's one more kinda funny thing about it I didn't understand till I actually boiled eye of newt, and all this stuff, and there was like... shit goin on from the 1800s, but-
in your life, have you ever walked by somebody's yard, and on some of the plants, it looks exactly like, someone just took a paint sprayer, and painted the plants sorta eggshell blue?
If you see this and there's not a single thing painted around there, except these plants, then - chances are, this stuff is Bordeaux mix.
It looks for all the world, almost exactly like, once you get right up on it, someone was cleaning the sprayer out for a commercial sprayer, and shot the watery light blue-green paint onto the plants.
I had a neighbor whose yard I passed and it was on his plants, like.. on some roses I think- like... our plant doesn't get it, ok? But there's this stuff, I dunno if you ever farmed vegetables? It's called fire blight, yO, and that shit is like... it's like a terminal case of bacterial spank for a LOT of legal foodstuff plants- trees, apples, man you name it - tomatoes, cucumbers, there's just skads of plants, that are susceptible to this fire blight business.
It was the bacterial stuff I made some for, and I have to go back and correct what I said, I stonered. Actually there was fungus I was trying to control, too, but anyway LoL - I think I misrepresented somewhat, referring to fire blight as fungal.
Anyway I was cruising by my neighbor's house and saw this stuff on his plants, like.. roses I guess, and I was like.... w..t...heck hMMm.
So - I was going down the road, and I see some more, just like this, on ANOTHER guy's fence, over beside his house - plant types unknown, right? So I was driving by somewhere ELSE, and saw this AGAIN.. and I was like.. wtF yO, who's going around a whole city spraying that stuff on peoples' fences, and their trees? ?
So for years you know, I saw this going on, and recently saw this spate of eggshell colored water splashed all over peoples' yards, and was looking at my own plants, trying to figure out how much it helped, and all this, with the wilting, the critters, potential for hiding that it's weed- like I say when it's in veg, you can spray enough on it that when it's around the other vegetables it helps hide it- and I had this big "!Eureka!" moment, where I felt like a fool. . . for years, Bordeaux mix had kinda slipped my mind, and there it was, -boom, right in my own yard, before I realized it. I was spraying it on my plants and I realized it because I had to make some to save some of my wife's trees, originally, then the garden was going up in fire blight flames, till I sprayed everything.
Anyway that's my story and I'm stickin' to it, your thread really does remind me of the books about various hobbies I've read through the years, in my own pet shop, and just everywhere till recently most information stopped being transmitted through hobby books.
Peace, good growin, good luck, don't let the lifers harsh your buzz!
T
TrueReligion
The new leaves are what matters most, here's a couple pages from the book
Attachments
T
TrueReligion
also spray the foliar on the underside of the leaves(stomata)
If it was on for several hours everything it was gonna do, for the most part, it did.
Homie you obviously got some chops so lemme spin ya a quickie on layin' em down, tyin em, yada Yada- you're an Auxin man who goes around dropping the Auxin word along with ''main growth hormone uh'course so I was levelin' tops tuh within two inches jis' laik all higher plants, ya know what I mean?"
-Like.. you may not go around talkin' about how Auxin is really two things, a main growth hormone and also a whole family, a lot to people yet, do ya by chance?
I thought I typed ya a little thing about how Auxin's the main growth hormone, and there's a reason for tying plants in certain shapes, to maximize their growth and all?
Dude, if I stonered, then there's a little run-down you're gonna enjoy and it's about the subject called apical dominance. It means "tip dominance" ok? Like basically. And see, there's this family of hormones called the Auxins and the main one is carted around and shit gets done with blindfolds on, and birds fly out of decks of cards, and chicks get sawed in two, while smiling and waving and wriggling their toes, and all kinda sh*t, and when it's all over, this plant, has been juggling Auxin the way a kid loves a favorite power ranger or G.I. Joe. And by manipulating this Auxin production the cells' growth is moderated, it's the thing that causes the basic shape, of every higher plant, ok?
Ok so- you know, through hook and crook, it winds up, that the plant, allows a certain class of growing nodes, to grow at full speed. And this is altered from plant to plant, to give any particular plant, it's characteristic shape, ok? Oaks, Okra, they all get their characteristic shapes, by the plant sensing through pressure - where's the water pressure less? - which part of itself is highest.
Everything decision-wise kinda goes down from there BT because - ok like in the case of pot, the plant tries to put, one single growing, flowering stalk, as high into space as possible, and then it surrounds that main, (it's meristem, center, main growing tip's meristem of any individual limb, and also any entire plant) -that main meristem - and then it provides itself with a back-up set of growing flowers it thrusts skyward.
In pot ya see, all the pollination's by wind. So get into the wind with this tallest tip, that's the payday for pot and a whole lotta other stuff too. And there's all this best distribution of the leaf material ya gotta put out to support that stem, vs wind/mammoth butts/hailstorms.
So you wind up with this kinda characteristic ''christmas tree" shape constantly referred to by our plant.
Ok so with pot, and really a whole sh**load of em, there's this mode man, that you turn on, and it's full growth mode.
And how it's done, is you get, every single growing node you can, BT, right at, the exact same height, same absolute height, in space. When this happens, the plant assumes - oH! Mammoth butt! Everybody go skyward we're in a sexually frustrated panic here, kids, so go, go gO!"
Ok. So... somebody gets turned on. Turned on all over. As in every single growing node, that you get at this absolute, ''top tier" level - truth is, a plant can tell at about 2 inches but the plants WILL figure something out by the time about 30, 36 hours go by after each adjustment, and start trying,
to get one main stem, up into the sky again, ahead of all the rest of em.
And this Auxin leveling, BT is the thing that creates the enhancement in growth. Now - your job, is to fight this plant, every 36 hours or so, see, as you go loook in there, and you can see, bro- you
can
see - this plant has figured out who the main set of flowers are gonna be, and if it can't break a node free, it just keeps adding
set of limbs,
after
set of limbs,
and
sets of limbs,
out of those limbs,
with flowers along the growing nodes,
as long as you can figure out how to keep leveling them, and the entire plant not be so dense, the water it transpires won't evaporate out of the buds, and fungus set up in it.
A lotta plants, their stems get real thick. And you wind up often growing quite a bit of wood this way but it is the method that gives up the most bud in total, due to an additional change in the plant's physiology.
The buds, at the very bottom of the plants, come out, like they're part of the top tier in the way that - they don't linger around, and not really mature sexually, you know what I mean, how a plant will have different parts of itself, at different levels of maturity, during the season? It's naturally evolutionary, right? String it out, keep up the times you have viable flowers catching pollen, all this? Ok?
Ok so- what happens is the buds all over the plant, take on this dense, mature nature, and when you harvest the plant, there will be a pretty narrow spread between the smallest buds, and the biggest: the plants most definitely don't make like - the biggest buds. The largest ones are kinda medium, but the huge, yO - the e.n.o.r.m.o.u.s. profusion of limb-set, after limb-set, after limb-set sprouting, trying to get upward,
and all of them being either top-tier or very close, they're all loaded with growth hormone: naturally, due to you reshaping it like a giant spider with a hundred feet to hold it down. Hundreds of growing nodes, within the space of a plant that's like, - 30 inches tall, six feet by seven feet in spread - the entire plant just bristles with vitality when they're done this way.
But there are drawbacks - like the enormous work to make them lay down like this. It's a - it's like it's a trick, man, there's this need in the industry to be able to figure out how to grow one of these pot plants, such that it's like it's under a pane of glass: UTTERLY flat.
Ok? This: is perfection.
But there's very legitimate problems.
There's SO much moisture being breathed out by the plant, that it just gets to where you can't get limbs out of each other's way, and you just can NOT get all that moisture out, before mildew, fungus, etc breaks out in the buds.
So life's a division between any of several things: what do you want it to look like? Biggest buds? Then no low stress training as described.
Biggest buds is achieved by letting a small number of stems grow straight up and supress the others through Auxin distribution to those leading, growing tips, and the ones just behind them. These get the most, the top two inches or so, and as the things climb higher and higher, a large fat cola is created from this distribution scheme by the ol' plant-a-r00nie.
There's also of course scrogging and I dunno if you know but that was designed, - just a flat fence - to make low stress training easier.
Low Stress Training's the manual tying down/weighting down with grates, gates, etc technique, you probably know. But sometimes other people don't bro so sorry if you know.. this is all kinda too much information. (shrug) LoL like I say I came out of a pet store so I get stoned, up late, retired, it's like ''wall of text dot com." LoL.
The plants when you lay them down like this, also tend to frost up a lot too, BT. There's a lot of energy and the plant responds to changes really fast as things go on, according to your strain, etc.
The vibrancy of some kinds, of like - real fert gobbling bush hawg commercial strains, - when they're laid down flat like this, again and again- it's something to behold, yO.
Now the moment you let one of these growing nodes up above the rest, or any group of them, the plant says - ah- HAH we got a WINNER and however many you let up, will be fed from then on, more, by the plant, because those will produce, more growth hormone Auxin. The ones below, will manufacture less of their own out at the tips of each stem on each limb, and will distribute less to the growing nodes that are further back toward the trunk of the plant, along each of those individual limbs.
------
As far as pinching and shaping for manifolding, I think it's some cool shit geometrically, and I like it conceptually a lot. I remember people trying to do something like this, over and over, and OVER, and obviously somebody's got it right.
Ok now that said there's the matter of the mathematics of paying to grow more and more cells, or paying to repair cells you damaged and the plant has to seal off, or catch the cooties.
Every time you kick it, beat it with a motorcycle chain, it gets tougher and meaner and yet more covered with sweaty smelly stuff,
- just like me btW- and it's breeding equipment will be highly stimulated from being tied prostrate again and again - coincidentally, also - just like me - but, when momma's making little baby flowers to grow up and be big flowers, momma doesn't really need to be healing up after the latest "I love you so I pinch you and I twist you and I hurt you" session at work. Again - just like me.
Ya know? I mean we're talking about basic, "do you prefer to be kicked in the armpit and/or have a hunk twisted/cut/ripped out, leaving jagged, exposed, inner shit exposed to the cootie monsters, and have that happen ten or twelve times just before breeding,
or do you prefer to just stand there and take in nutrition, and grow ever more ready for Ye Olde Season to be even more jolly?
Ok- well, that fact exists. When a plant's gotten damaged, resources get transferred to seal that damage up or I could go over there, and start acting creepy.. claiming I'm a plant doctor, so it's ok.
Then once... you know.. I get in, turns out I am actually.. like... the borg
and hilarity ensues,
if one is the devil.
Can I point to the ''peer review'' on this? Uh, nO. Uhm, maybe because I'm just dumb, or maybe because I figured once I knew it, if I explained it, anybody else would be like... uh, DuH. LoL.
LOL so - there's a drawback when the plant gets stuff cut off. And think of it like this - (well first off a buncha people had a contest worldwide, and tried a buncha ways, and guess what, go FIGURe, LoL, maxing out the growth hormone, through maximum flattening possible by human means,
and not damaging the plant at all ever,
and feeding it the best food
the best ways,
grows the most dope, yO.
I mean best as in best-for-sheer-weight-in-usable-pot-gain.
I don't know if you know about all that and I might be kinda spamming but I figure I might ought to just let you know, that - -that's the case, and for old pot growers, everybody pretty much remembers the contests to see what method grows the most pot per investment, it was spread over several websites worldwide, in a friendly way, and the low stress training method, won. Feed it the most, harm it the least, and contort it so it's own growth hormone manufacture is as maximized as can be physically achieved.. it's like a prescription for success.
And the place the most gains seem to come is in the many, many, many little buds, all up and down the stems, all over the plant, that many people remove- typically, because you gotta have the airflow, is what makes you have to do it BT.
The airflow always chokes out, and you, the trainer, surrender, \o/ and you wind up having to separate limbs, and this is very, VERY common, with flat or horizontal, scrogs. SCReenOfGreen, where you stretch fence or lattice or string, and then you more tuck than tie, to that.
The tucking method is some coooooooL sh** if you do it like - super-duper extreme with a very stiff, unyielding fence. but obviously LoL it's like cutting a grape vine out of a fence.
So people look for answers.
What I do is I cause myself to come across these big, super-heavy, about - a meter or so, square, chunks of grate. Now - this is kinda an art. You need something, that has enough weight, that it can hold down, a LOT of plant. 5 main stems streaming out of a plant, with another 30, or even a hundred, but on any given day the chunk of grate is on about 50 or 60 maybe, - and I move the grates around on the plants, and I combine this with using baling wire, string, or laying boards down on the limbs, to hold the thing flat.
Baling wire comes in so handy, because you can double it, see, and put the doubled-over end there, into a drill chuck, ya know? And ya tighten the chuck down, obviously, and ya spin that doggone drill, and you make a super-duper cooler'n most peoples' tie-down wire with enough strength, that at double like that, you're able to fold it over a limb a couple of times easily, and yet it's solid as a rock.
Now- typically this is done with a five gallon bucket, right? I mean for me. And, it'll have perlite in it as a hempy bucket, hole two inches from the bottom, feed it hydroponic nutes. Nowadays, it's a coco fiber bucket but that stuff's just not got the cool factor so I still grow a lot in a mixture of perlite, and vermiculite or also I just throw in my coco too, nowadays. I dunno if you ever handled all this kinda stuff man some of it's like WAY cool, especially the perlite/vermmiculite mix cause they use it in commercial setups, like in malls and stuff. Hempy discovered you can grow pot hydroponically yet passively and sorta perfected this, using this perlite/vermiculite mix. For DECADES the DEA and Hollywood swore to Gaia hydroponic pot growing's hard.
Hempy knew, took years, but now the world knows, and that's history. You can grow pot dirt cheap and easy hydroponically.
So anyway what mine wind up as, a lot of the time, is a 5 gallon bucket and it just sits on a piece of even flimsy chicken wire. And I tie, the main wires, to this wire the bucket sits on and hold down the limbs, with individual wires, or sometimes like even a bungee cord man - seriously - and as the things get stronger and stronger
toward the middle and end of the season,
it gets time to start grating that pot,
and the grating, helps me establish a really level field of "top tier" buds - growing nodes-
and keep the growth hormone just screaming through the entire plant, to whatever degree I/one can. When you grow something that gets some legs, some length of stem, it'll get long, and there's a lot more stem for the weed to grow bud out onto, and you don't grow as much wood vs flower material. But what happens is, you have to support limbs.
And then, ya know, when you grow some bush-hawg of an indica, that will like.. eat the fertilizer straight, out of the plastic jug, just sit it on the soil surface and the plant will open the lid, push back the foil, and help itself to a quarter cup or so - these tend to grow really thick stems,
although the effect on the buds is again similar, in how the Auxin distribution throughout the plant makes all of the buds go ahead and frost up, and mature, and grow like crazy,
like they're toward the top of the plant.
The profusion of new limbs appearing over and over happens too, and it can lead to limbs getting crossed and in each others' way.
There's a very... ''modern education" version of this on Wikipedia, under apical dominance, but as you can pretty well imagine, there's not quite as enthusiastic a discussion about this when they're referring to spruce trees, and cactus. LoL.
Like there's very few actual quotes that go "You can't believe how those f***rs grow, MannNN.. I mean, it's like.. CRAZY!!"
But it is kinda the deal to find something you can throw on them, BT.
It hides em, and you don't work. And, you don't damage the plant. You gently, without breaking anything and incurring this damage-repair stall out, start as soon as you see a green plant you can manage-
making each successive node of growth, as close to horizontal, as possible.
Now -
as you can well imagine, this leads to some crazy stuff going on, with people suspending these lattices of string, and ALL kinds of crazy, - 
where we find ways, ya see, to start towing these LITTLE, TINY FRAGILE seedlings, over sideways, ya know, so we can achieve those legendary plants, where - sometimes you see the photos online, maybe you can google 'low stress training marijuana' and do "images" ok - ? I dunno, but any way, there's these photos where guys have stretched a plant out, and the entire plant, runs along their fence, see- and the main stem will run 4 inches off the ground, for 10 feet: and all these little buds come up.
Well - this is sorta growth hormone training to the max and we all learned to do this when pot was a lot more illegal, so it was always a kind of way, to say "Hey F**K Y*U," to the DEA et al, these anti-freedom authority worshiping moral hicks - that - you may as well piss into a fan, hillbilly, as stop me."
People would sometimes post up pictures of things like old motorcycle tires laying over a plant, or a gate, or something heavy like that- just crushing a plant down till there were 50, 70, 200 little buds all sticking up an a flat plane over a big ol' pot about two feet high.
I dunno what's online now. It takes so much work, and people who do this are kinda natural paranoiacs anyway, so a lotta the time BT when you hold a plant down like that, there's never even a photo of it that makes it to online.
People really do need to figure out some kinda ''growing pot under glass" thing, where there's no way the pot could EVER exploit some crevice, and just has to grow flat as a - pane of glass lol.
When you're growing a really heavy, fat growing indica, the stems are so short, that there won't be nearly room for everything on one flat plane. It makes places where the plant's just gonna mold. That's all there is to it, and you're gonna cut wood, or go blind denying ya knew the mildew was gonna dissolve that little section of bud there, and travel out.
I don't know, like I say- if you already know all that. A lotta times I go into pet/plants store helper mode, and I'll spiel off a few jillion syllables outta reflex; just because I figure a lotta people like to read, when people get together and talk about a subject, and several different people just kick in with whatever they know about something.
If you're already hip to all that then, obviously LoL - disregard, it can make a thread get like reading the inside of a brick when somebody like me starts sativa-spamming late at night LoL.
Homie you obviously got some chops so lemme spin ya a quickie on layin' em down, tyin em, yada Yada- you're an Auxin man who goes around dropping the Auxin word along with ''main growth hormone uh'course so I was levelin' tops tuh within two inches jis' laik all higher plants, ya know what I mean?"
-Like.. you may not go around talkin' about how Auxin is really two things, a main growth hormone and also a whole family, a lot to people yet, do ya by chance?
I thought I typed ya a little thing about how Auxin's the main growth hormone, and there's a reason for tying plants in certain shapes, to maximize their growth and all?
Dude, if I stonered, then there's a little run-down you're gonna enjoy and it's about the subject called apical dominance. It means "tip dominance" ok? Like basically. And see, there's this family of hormones called the Auxins and the main one is carted around and shit gets done with blindfolds on, and birds fly out of decks of cards, and chicks get sawed in two, while smiling and waving and wriggling their toes, and all kinda sh*t, and when it's all over, this plant, has been juggling Auxin the way a kid loves a favorite power ranger or G.I. Joe. And by manipulating this Auxin production the cells' growth is moderated, it's the thing that causes the basic shape, of every higher plant, ok?
Ok so- you know, through hook and crook, it winds up, that the plant, allows a certain class of growing nodes, to grow at full speed. And this is altered from plant to plant, to give any particular plant, it's characteristic shape, ok? Oaks, Okra, they all get their characteristic shapes, by the plant sensing through pressure - where's the water pressure less? - which part of itself is highest.
Everything decision-wise kinda goes down from there BT because - ok like in the case of pot, the plant tries to put, one single growing, flowering stalk, as high into space as possible, and then it surrounds that main, (it's meristem, center, main growing tip's meristem of any individual limb, and also any entire plant) -that main meristem - and then it provides itself with a back-up set of growing flowers it thrusts skyward.
In pot ya see, all the pollination's by wind. So get into the wind with this tallest tip, that's the payday for pot and a whole lotta other stuff too. And there's all this best distribution of the leaf material ya gotta put out to support that stem, vs wind/mammoth butts/hailstorms.
So you wind up with this kinda characteristic ''christmas tree" shape constantly referred to by our plant.
Ok so with pot, and really a whole sh**load of em, there's this mode man, that you turn on, and it's full growth mode.
And how it's done, is you get, every single growing node you can, BT, right at, the exact same height, same absolute height, in space. When this happens, the plant assumes - oH! Mammoth butt! Everybody go skyward we're in a sexually frustrated panic here, kids, so go, go gO!"
Ok. So... somebody gets turned on. Turned on all over. As in every single growing node, that you get at this absolute, ''top tier" level - truth is, a plant can tell at about 2 inches but the plants WILL figure something out by the time about 30, 36 hours go by after each adjustment, and start trying,
to get one main stem, up into the sky again, ahead of all the rest of em.
And this Auxin leveling, BT is the thing that creates the enhancement in growth. Now - your job, is to fight this plant, every 36 hours or so, see, as you go loook in there, and you can see, bro- you
can
see - this plant has figured out who the main set of flowers are gonna be, and if it can't break a node free, it just keeps adding
set of limbs,
after
set of limbs,
and
sets of limbs,
out of those limbs,
with flowers along the growing nodes,
as long as you can figure out how to keep leveling them, and the entire plant not be so dense, the water it transpires won't evaporate out of the buds, and fungus set up in it.
A lotta plants, their stems get real thick. And you wind up often growing quite a bit of wood this way but it is the method that gives up the most bud in total, due to an additional change in the plant's physiology.
The buds, at the very bottom of the plants, come out, like they're part of the top tier in the way that - they don't linger around, and not really mature sexually, you know what I mean, how a plant will have different parts of itself, at different levels of maturity, during the season? It's naturally evolutionary, right? String it out, keep up the times you have viable flowers catching pollen, all this? Ok?
Ok so- what happens is the buds all over the plant, take on this dense, mature nature, and when you harvest the plant, there will be a pretty narrow spread between the smallest buds, and the biggest: the plants most definitely don't make like - the biggest buds. The largest ones are kinda medium, but the huge, yO - the e.n.o.r.m.o.u.s. profusion of limb-set, after limb-set, after limb-set sprouting, trying to get upward,
and all of them being either top-tier or very close, they're all loaded with growth hormone: naturally, due to you reshaping it like a giant spider with a hundred feet to hold it down. Hundreds of growing nodes, within the space of a plant that's like, - 30 inches tall, six feet by seven feet in spread - the entire plant just bristles with vitality when they're done this way.
But there are drawbacks - like the enormous work to make them lay down like this. It's a - it's like it's a trick, man, there's this need in the industry to be able to figure out how to grow one of these pot plants, such that it's like it's under a pane of glass: UTTERLY flat.
Ok? This: is perfection.
But there's very legitimate problems.
There's SO much moisture being breathed out by the plant, that it just gets to where you can't get limbs out of each other's way, and you just can NOT get all that moisture out, before mildew, fungus, etc breaks out in the buds.
So life's a division between any of several things: what do you want it to look like? Biggest buds? Then no low stress training as described.
Biggest buds is achieved by letting a small number of stems grow straight up and supress the others through Auxin distribution to those leading, growing tips, and the ones just behind them. These get the most, the top two inches or so, and as the things climb higher and higher, a large fat cola is created from this distribution scheme by the ol' plant-a-r00nie.
There's also of course scrogging and I dunno if you know but that was designed, - just a flat fence - to make low stress training easier.
Low Stress Training's the manual tying down/weighting down with grates, gates, etc technique, you probably know. But sometimes other people don't bro so sorry if you know.. this is all kinda too much information. (shrug) LoL like I say I came out of a pet store so I get stoned, up late, retired, it's like ''wall of text dot com." LoL.
The plants when you lay them down like this, also tend to frost up a lot too, BT. There's a lot of energy and the plant responds to changes really fast as things go on, according to your strain, etc.
The vibrancy of some kinds, of like - real fert gobbling bush hawg commercial strains, - when they're laid down flat like this, again and again- it's something to behold, yO.
Now the moment you let one of these growing nodes up above the rest, or any group of them, the plant says - ah- HAH we got a WINNER and however many you let up, will be fed from then on, more, by the plant, because those will produce, more growth hormone Auxin. The ones below, will manufacture less of their own out at the tips of each stem on each limb, and will distribute less to the growing nodes that are further back toward the trunk of the plant, along each of those individual limbs.
------
As far as pinching and shaping for manifolding, I think it's some cool shit geometrically, and I like it conceptually a lot. I remember people trying to do something like this, over and over, and OVER, and obviously somebody's got it right.
Ok now that said there's the matter of the mathematics of paying to grow more and more cells, or paying to repair cells you damaged and the plant has to seal off, or catch the cooties.
Every time you kick it, beat it with a motorcycle chain, it gets tougher and meaner and yet more covered with sweaty smelly stuff,
- just like me btW- and it's breeding equipment will be highly stimulated from being tied prostrate again and again - coincidentally, also - just like me - but, when momma's making little baby flowers to grow up and be big flowers, momma doesn't really need to be healing up after the latest "I love you so I pinch you and I twist you and I hurt you" session at work. Again - just like me.
Ya know? I mean we're talking about basic, "do you prefer to be kicked in the armpit and/or have a hunk twisted/cut/ripped out, leaving jagged, exposed, inner shit exposed to the cootie monsters, and have that happen ten or twelve times just before breeding,
or do you prefer to just stand there and take in nutrition, and grow ever more ready for Ye Olde Season to be even more jolly?
Ok- well, that fact exists. When a plant's gotten damaged, resources get transferred to seal that damage up or I could go over there, and start acting creepy.. claiming I'm a plant doctor, so it's ok.
Then once... you know.. I get in, turns out I am actually.. like... the borg
and hilarity ensues,
if one is the devil.
Can I point to the ''peer review'' on this? Uh, nO. Uhm, maybe because I'm just dumb, or maybe because I figured once I knew it, if I explained it, anybody else would be like... uh, DuH. LoL.
LOL so - there's a drawback when the plant gets stuff cut off. And think of it like this - (well first off a buncha people had a contest worldwide, and tried a buncha ways, and guess what, go FIGURe, LoL, maxing out the growth hormone, through maximum flattening possible by human means,
and not damaging the plant at all ever,
and feeding it the best food
the best ways,
grows the most dope, yO.
I mean best as in best-for-sheer-weight-in-usable-pot-gain.
I don't know if you know about all that and I might be kinda spamming but I figure I might ought to just let you know, that - -that's the case, and for old pot growers, everybody pretty much remembers the contests to see what method grows the most pot per investment, it was spread over several websites worldwide, in a friendly way, and the low stress training method, won. Feed it the most, harm it the least, and contort it so it's own growth hormone manufacture is as maximized as can be physically achieved.. it's like a prescription for success.
And the place the most gains seem to come is in the many, many, many little buds, all up and down the stems, all over the plant, that many people remove- typically, because you gotta have the airflow, is what makes you have to do it BT.
The airflow always chokes out, and you, the trainer, surrender, \o/ and you wind up having to separate limbs, and this is very, VERY common, with flat or horizontal, scrogs. SCReenOfGreen, where you stretch fence or lattice or string, and then you more tuck than tie, to that.
The tucking method is some coooooooL sh** if you do it like - super-duper extreme with a very stiff, unyielding fence. but obviously LoL it's like cutting a grape vine out of a fence.
So people look for answers.
What I do is I cause myself to come across these big, super-heavy, about - a meter or so, square, chunks of grate. Now - this is kinda an art. You need something, that has enough weight, that it can hold down, a LOT of plant. 5 main stems streaming out of a plant, with another 30, or even a hundred, but on any given day the chunk of grate is on about 50 or 60 maybe, - and I move the grates around on the plants, and I combine this with using baling wire, string, or laying boards down on the limbs, to hold the thing flat.
Baling wire comes in so handy, because you can double it, see, and put the doubled-over end there, into a drill chuck, ya know? And ya tighten the chuck down, obviously, and ya spin that doggone drill, and you make a super-duper cooler'n most peoples' tie-down wire with enough strength, that at double like that, you're able to fold it over a limb a couple of times easily, and yet it's solid as a rock.
Now- typically this is done with a five gallon bucket, right? I mean for me. And, it'll have perlite in it as a hempy bucket, hole two inches from the bottom, feed it hydroponic nutes. Nowadays, it's a coco fiber bucket but that stuff's just not got the cool factor so I still grow a lot in a mixture of perlite, and vermiculite or also I just throw in my coco too, nowadays. I dunno if you ever handled all this kinda stuff man some of it's like WAY cool, especially the perlite/vermmiculite mix cause they use it in commercial setups, like in malls and stuff. Hempy discovered you can grow pot hydroponically yet passively and sorta perfected this, using this perlite/vermiculite mix. For DECADES the DEA and Hollywood swore to Gaia hydroponic pot growing's hard.
Hempy knew, took years, but now the world knows, and that's history. You can grow pot dirt cheap and easy hydroponically.
So anyway what mine wind up as, a lot of the time, is a 5 gallon bucket and it just sits on a piece of even flimsy chicken wire. And I tie, the main wires, to this wire the bucket sits on and hold down the limbs, with individual wires, or sometimes like even a bungee cord man - seriously - and as the things get stronger and stronger
toward the middle and end of the season,
it gets time to start grating that pot,
and the grating, helps me establish a really level field of "top tier" buds - growing nodes-
and keep the growth hormone just screaming through the entire plant, to whatever degree I/one can. When you grow something that gets some legs, some length of stem, it'll get long, and there's a lot more stem for the weed to grow bud out onto, and you don't grow as much wood vs flower material. But what happens is, you have to support limbs.
And then, ya know, when you grow some bush-hawg of an indica, that will like.. eat the fertilizer straight, out of the plastic jug, just sit it on the soil surface and the plant will open the lid, push back the foil, and help itself to a quarter cup or so - these tend to grow really thick stems,
although the effect on the buds is again similar, in how the Auxin distribution throughout the plant makes all of the buds go ahead and frost up, and mature, and grow like crazy,
like they're toward the top of the plant.
The profusion of new limbs appearing over and over happens too, and it can lead to limbs getting crossed and in each others' way.
There's a very... ''modern education" version of this on Wikipedia, under apical dominance, but as you can pretty well imagine, there's not quite as enthusiastic a discussion about this when they're referring to spruce trees, and cactus. LoL.
Like there's very few actual quotes that go "You can't believe how those f***rs grow, MannNN.. I mean, it's like.. CRAZY!!"
But it is kinda the deal to find something you can throw on them, BT.
It hides em, and you don't work. And, you don't damage the plant. You gently, without breaking anything and incurring this damage-repair stall out, start as soon as you see a green plant you can manage-
making each successive node of growth, as close to horizontal, as possible.
Now -
as you can well imagine, this leads to some crazy stuff going on, with people suspending these lattices of string, and ALL kinds of crazy, - where we find ways, ya see, to start towing these LITTLE, TINY FRAGILE seedlings, over sideways, ya know, so we can achieve those legendary plants, where - sometimes you see the photos online, maybe you can google 'low stress training marijuana' and do "images" ok - ? I dunno, but any way, there's these photos where guys have stretched a plant out, and the entire plant, runs along their fence, see- and the main stem will run 4 inches off the ground, for 10 feet: and all these little buds come up. Well - this is sorta growth hormone training to the max and we all learned to do this when pot was a lot more illegal, so it was always a kind of way, to say "Hey F**K Y*U," to the DEA et al, these anti-freedom authority worshiping moral hicks - that - you may as well piss into a fan, hillbilly, as stop me."
People would sometimes post up pictures of things like old motorcycle tires laying over a plant, or a gate, or something heavy like that- just crushing a plant down till there were 50, 70, 200 little buds all sticking up an a flat plane over a big ol' pot about two feet high.
I dunno what's online now. It takes so much work, and people who do this are kinda natural paranoiacs anyway, so a lotta the time BT when you hold a plant down like that, there's never even a photo of it that makes it to online.
People really do need to figure out some kinda ''growing pot under glass" thing, where there's no way the pot could EVER exploit some crevice, and just has to grow flat as a - pane of glass lol.
When you're growing a really heavy, fat growing indica, the stems are so short, that there won't be nearly room for everything on one flat plane. It makes places where the plant's just gonna mold. That's all there is to it, and you're gonna cut wood, or go blind denying ya knew the mildew was gonna dissolve that little section of bud there, and travel out.
I don't know, like I say- if you already know all that. A lotta times I go into pet/plants store helper mode, and I'll spiel off a few jillion syllables outta reflex; just because I figure a lotta people like to read, when people get together and talk about a subject, and several different people just kick in with whatever they know about something.
If you're already hip to all that then, obviously LoL - disregard, it can make a thread get like reading the inside of a brick when somebody like me starts sativa-spamming late at night LoL.
brown_thumb
Active member
TR, thanks for the screen captures. I've been thinking the problem is too much calcium in the soil locking out magnesium (yellow lower leaves, healthy middle and upper leaves).
I assumed this because I read in another thread the extreme benefits of adding horticultural gypsum to soil. I think I might have added too much... perhaps any amount would have been too much in this particular soil mix?
I did soak the leaves underneath as well as the tops.
I assumed this because I read in another thread the extreme benefits of adding horticultural gypsum to soil. I think I might have added too much... perhaps any amount would have been too much in this particular soil mix?
I did soak the leaves underneath as well as the tops.
Last edited:
brown_thumb
Active member
Cannabis, thank you.
Yes, I recently learned what auxin is. When I manifolded the older plants, I left the four tops uncut and eliminated all other growth. After that, the four remaining tops went into growth overdrive.
When present, I left the smaller nodes immediately under the tops intact and those too are growing like crazy. Lastly, a few new buds formed on the (now horizontal) branches and I'm leaving all of those too. I'm hoping for nice high-quality yields from these plants.
If I have more outside grows, my trimming and training will change. For outside, I think I'll just do some basic trimming/thinning/topping to attempt making final buds bigger and evenly-sized and the plants bushier. Then I'll tie the branches further open (splayed out) to allow more sunlight into the inner areas of the main plants and encourage shorter/wider growth.
Regarding breathing/evaporation: Transporation becomes an issue when the humidity is very high, as it has been for a couple of days. But the outside plants don't seem to mind much and they definitely catch up when the humidity drops and the sun is shining. Too little transporation isn't an issue for the young plants because they're under warm lights at night and when it's heavily overcast outside.
When I build the grow room I'm going to try vertical scrogs or trellises, floor to ceiling. I need to conserve floor space.
----------------------------------
JOKE: What is the difference between a hormone and an enzyme?
----------------------------------
ANSWER: You can't hear an en zyme.
Yes, I recently learned what auxin is. When I manifolded the older plants, I left the four tops uncut and eliminated all other growth. After that, the four remaining tops went into growth overdrive.
When present, I left the smaller nodes immediately under the tops intact and those too are growing like crazy. Lastly, a few new buds formed on the (now horizontal) branches and I'm leaving all of those too. I'm hoping for nice high-quality yields from these plants.
If I have more outside grows, my trimming and training will change. For outside, I think I'll just do some basic trimming/thinning/topping to attempt making final buds bigger and evenly-sized and the plants bushier. Then I'll tie the branches further open (splayed out) to allow more sunlight into the inner areas of the main plants and encourage shorter/wider growth.
Regarding breathing/evaporation: Transporation becomes an issue when the humidity is very high, as it has been for a couple of days. But the outside plants don't seem to mind much and they definitely catch up when the humidity drops and the sun is shining. Too little transporation isn't an issue for the young plants because they're under warm lights at night and when it's heavily overcast outside.
When I build the grow room I'm going to try vertical scrogs or trellises, floor to ceiling. I need to conserve floor space.
----------------------------------
JOKE: What is the difference between a hormone and an enzyme?
----------------------------------
ANSWER: You can't hear an en zyme.
Last edited:
brown_thumb
Active member
As stated earlier, the foliar spraying doesn't seem to be helping the yellowing lower leaves much, if any. However, they aren't getting any worse and perhaps just a very tiny bit better. So that's something positive, I suppose.
What I have noticed is the plants seem to be going into growth overdrive. They seem to be growing larger and fuller more quickly. Perhaps that's just my imagination or wishful thinking. I'll take some new pics when it's brighter outside tomorrow afternoon. I'm anxious to compare from the last set of photos.
If foliar spraying is indeed increasing growth significantly then I'll do more of it.
What I have noticed is the plants seem to be going into growth overdrive. They seem to be growing larger and fuller more quickly. Perhaps that's just my imagination or wishful thinking. I'll take some new pics when it's brighter outside tomorrow afternoon. I'm anxious to compare from the last set of photos.
If foliar spraying is indeed increasing growth significantly then I'll do more of it.
brown_thumb
Active member
I couldn't wait for comparison pics. There is approximately 42 hours growth between the last set of pics (post #338) and these.
There isn't as much difference as I had imagined but it's definitely noticeable, so I'm happy.
There isn't as much difference as I had imagined but it's definitely noticeable, so I'm happy.
brown_thumb
Active member
And the babies...
Levitationofme
Active member
They look very nice! Very nice indeed. You are gaining skill and understanding of this stuff.
Looks like a several of them have really shown they can be Manifolded and are growing nicer then the rest. Are they the Cherry Bombs?
Looks like a several of them have really shown they can be Manifolded and are growing nicer then the rest. Are they the Cherry Bombs?
brown_thumb
Active member
^^^ Thanks to kind folks like yourself and many others.
THANK YOU ALL!!
THANK YOU ALL!!
brown_thumb
Active member
I'm just glad I'm not killing them anymore. Ha ha!! Maybe I can harvest and re-veg the older plants in a couple months.
brown_thumb
Active member
Today's pics below. I trimmed the yellow leaves from the babies but did nothing to the flowering adults. The three foliar sprays and latest soil drench may have turned the healthy leaves a bit darker but did nothing for the yellow lower leaves. However, I can't be certain but I think the foliar feeding did cause a spurt of growth. I guess I'll just return to my regular feeding regimen and add foliar feeding.
brown_thumb
Active member
So now the lower leaves on the larger plants are yellowing and dying. I've trimmed a few of the worst ones off and will do a regular feeding this evening. Maybe that will help. It's not supposed to rain here for at least a week.
brown_thumb
Active member
The last I checked, the soil PH was 7.2 and I water at PH 6.2-6.5.
Levitationofme
Active member
You may want to stop foliar one the ones that are flowering. It can make for some off tasting
Smoke.
Smoke.
brown_thumb
Active member
I won't foliar spray anymore. It was done as an emergency measure that was either unnecessary or did no good. I was going to feed tonight but am feeling lousy so will feed in the morning instead. Maybe that will straighten them out.
