The Short Bus Beginners Mixed Bag Perpetual Harvest Journal: JTR, GDP, and many more

Welcome, anybody and everybody! This journal is gonna chronicle my first attempt at cultivating my favorite plant. This is a legal op, Prop 15 certified for anyone concerned with that kind of thing. It's pretty awesome to me that I can finally stop paying ridiculous dope fiend prices for what is literally a dried herb, with no fear of incarceration for gardening on private property. YAY!
First, I want to say thanks to everyone on RIU, this site is the shit and I've learned more here than you could shake a 4 cola stalk at. Really, thanks to everyone who shares info and asks questions, it is so helpful.
This is your typical perpetual set-up, clone, veg, and flowering areas, although the clone spot is fully makeshift at the moment. Planning to raise the veggers up on a platform in their room and put clones downstairs w a couple cfls. In the meantime, the clones are on top of my cable box. Keeps em warm and steamy!




These are Blue Cheese (left) and Sensi Seeds Super Skunk (right). Their moms both went into the new flower room today, having birthed their successors and ensured their legacies. In my bong. I have 8 strains at the moment, in various stages, mostly due to poor planning on my part. When starting on this kind of rotating crop, I recommend getting 1 batch of 2 strains, 3 tops, and waiting to build up your own clone stock. As I've learned, there's no guarantee that your local club will have the same strains for several weeks in a row. Oh well, I always liked variety.

Where we produce the produce. Horrible, I know. I built this veg room myself for around $350, light and fans included. The light is a 250 watt HPS, as evidenced by the pics, and it's pretty wimpy. Given the negligible difference in cost of purchase and of operation, I wish I'd gotten a 400. Just in case anyone's in the design phase, spend the money for a brighter light. Anyway, pics...





Here's where you really see the clusterfuck of strains I've got right now. In the left tray, a KC Jones (front left), an OG Kush (front right), and 4 of TGAs own Jack the Ripper. I'm excited about this one, as all the print and video on it looks intense. I love a good sativa! In the right tray, 2 Mendo Purps in the front, one of which is doing great. The other one just wilted a couple days ago after a watering. No idea what happened to it that didn't happen to the rest. Behind them is a Sour Grape and 5 GDPs, just to have some indica around for bedtime and movie nights with the missus. My plan is to clone everything and then narrow it down to what we like and what other folks who need medicine seem to like. Anyone who has grown any of these various types and has pointers on nutes, sensitivities, whatever, please tell me all about it. Speaking of nutes, I'm going Fox Farms, the big 3. Might shell out for Cha Ching, we'll see.

On to the good stuff. I'm flowering in a 4x4 Hydro Hut, $95 on Amazon, lit with a 600w HPS, $229 on Amazon with bulb. I need to get a better arrangement of fans, preferably some that can be hung from the ceiling to free up real estate on the floor. It gets hot in there too, still need an intake fan, but it stays under 85 at the height of the canopy so it'll work for now. I set up the flower room this morning, so it's still a work in progress. What isn't?

In the first pic, you see all 6 girls in the flower room. In a couple weeks, they'll be joined by the girls currently in the veg room, who will provide new clones before being moved and replaced by my current round of clones. And repeat. That's the plan, at least. We'll see how we do. In the first pic, I have 2 trays, each with 3 plants. The tray on the left is indica, 2 GDPs and a Blue Cheese. On the right we have sativas, 1 each Super Skunk, Jack the Ripper, and KC Jones. The latter 2 are pretty leggy due to some initial insufficient light, demonstrated in the 3rd pic there. They just weren't close enough to the bulb the first week or so. Live and learn. The last pic is Shorty, a 2 inch Blue Cheese. She's like that because she bore the brunt of all my early fuck-ups. This is actually the top of the original clone, recloned after I over-watered the original clone to root-rot. That sucked, really sad. I just haven't had the heart to throw Shorty out, so I took her out back and let her fend for herself. Now she's more pet than crop.

3 days later, and I haven't lost a single one! I know cloning isn't the hardest feat in the world, but it's my first time trying it and I'm psyched. Super Skunk and Blue Cheese... that's gonna stink so good. Having coffee and waiting for the light to come on in the flower room. Always more to do, like continue my solitary journey of journalism... sniff... Seriously folks, feel free to comment or interact here. I know there's no bud pics yet, but come on!

That cable box is a great stand-in for a heating mat.

Boredom leads to beginner's macro-photography. Here's the clones, almost a week after being cut. They still wilt if I lave the dome off for more than 5 or 10 minutes. Is that normal? Other than that, they look great and have new, post-cutting growth on quite a few. So far the Super Skunks are impressing me more than the Blue Cheese, but there's a long way to go yet.

Most of the close-ups are the Supers, which are the ones on the right side of my tray.

I have no idea how people take decent pics under HPS lighting, so today I snapped a few, gave up and started pulling my girls out into my work area for photo op.
Here's the actual room, for the sake of perspective. Left tray is, from left to right, front to back, Mendo Purps, Casey (KC?) Jones, OG Kush, and 4 Jack the Rippers, which look like baby Dr. Seuss trees. That's a compliment, by the way. Seuss owns! Right tray, same order, is Sour Grape and 5 unimpressive GDPs. I know a lot of people love growing this stuff, but I can't say as I'd bother with it again. Maybe when I'm a little more experienced, I don't know. I've had issues with yellowing, then issues with burn, then repeat. They get the same care as the rest, but they stay pinner and troublesome. I have 2 more in flowering, doing ok but definitely lagging behind the rest. I don't get it.


I gave each strain a couple of "runway shots" (sorry, my wife and I just got a kitten and named her Cheryl Tiggs and model jokes are running thick in our home), so without further bullshit, here's my girls, starting with the Mendo.


She got a little bit leggy while I was waiting on the flower room set-up to arrive, but it seems like she's filling out. Here's the Casey Jones...




That thing is getting huge compared to the rest. About a foot tall now. OG Kush...



The OG looks great, and I plan on cloning her before she moves into flower for sure. Here's a line-up of my Jack the Rippers. I really like the weird shapes these clones came in. A lot of dog-legs, which I'm hoping will lead to multiple tops. All my JRs were fimmed about a week back, but the first one here seemed to respond the best, presenting four tops and 1 or 2 upper side branches that should do well also. Probably means I did this one right.





The first one shown is my favorite, chunky and bushy, and the second I also like because it really shows the dog-legging I was talking about. I'm hoping that side branch that opposes the main stem turns into a second cola. That last shot is a root tip sticking out of the drainage holes in the grow bag. I only shot 2 of the 4 JRs. Here's my Sour Grape...



The JR and the SG are the only 2 strains in my "index" that I've never tried. I'm really looking forward to smoking these for the first time, out of my own garden. Of course that also means I better do this right so I can try not only the strain, but what it's capable of. Last and so far least, one of my GDPs. Not impressed with these. Maybe it was just a lousy batch of clones. Or maybe I suck at growing pure indica. It does look about ready to branch out tho.

Here's a little update on my big girls, who showed their first pre-flowers today. NICE! I tried to get some close-ups on em, but the leaves blocked the flash a lot of the time. You'll see. Here's a couple glowing HPS grow room pics...



And some individual shots of three of my girls. Here's the Super Skunk.





Hopefully you can make out the itty bitty pistils curling out of the stems in some of those. If not now, a week from now they should be real obvious. Here's Lucy, my Blue Cheese, along with her first pistils.




Come to think of it, I've never smoked any of this either. And this I only have to wait 7 weeks for. "Only 7 weeks" is an oxymoron. Here's one of my GDPs from the flower room, also showing pre-flowers. These look alright, furthering my theory of under-cooked clones in my veg room. They had roots showing, but they were in 1" rockwool, so it doesn't take much root to show. Anyway, here's a healthy GDP moving into flower.




I've got a Casey and a JR in the flower room as well, but they didn't veg as long as the others and stretched early, so I'm going to wait for them to look a little better before I bother bringing them out for pictures.

That's it for now, but I'll be back to continue my lonely vigil in a few days. Feel free to share your thoughts.

Just kicking back, watching Pet Semetary and smoking on some of this Blue Dream we got from a friend. I love this shit. Figured I'd share a little bit of the flavor.

sYeah, wilting is normal. Just mist them and make sure to do that at least a few times a day. Clones can be surprisingly resilient. I thaught i lost 3 of 7 ww clones. I just took em out of the jiffy cubes they were in, was like day 4 or 6 of rooting. Put them in one of those pots the roots can grow through and transplanted them to soil and stuck them in the shade outside. Got rid of the pests and now all 7 look good.

So did you end up with a 600 after getting the 250 hps?

Looking good there SB

Sorry so late I just got back from vacation

Keep up the great work

Alright, we got some visitors! Welcome, T, and what up corners, good to meet you! Thanks for checking my project out. I still have the 250 in my veg room, and I use a 600 in the flower room. I want to get a ceramic MH bulb for the 250, they're designed to run in HPS fixtures and throw way more usable spectrum. Kinda new, but the science is 100% sound and it's only a $50 dollar bulb. Still a little tough to find outside of Amazon, but we'll get it dialed. Hey T, I've been woking my macro skills. Still learning, but having a lot of fun with it. Thanks for the suggestion.

So once again, it's late, I'm stoned, and I'm documenting my smoke. Tonight, the viewing is Futurama on DVD and the smoke is Mystery Purps. I don't know what the hell it really is, I'm just calling it that cuz it sounds cool.






I'm digging documenting my smoke, plus I just like taking pictures of weed. I'll post some new pics of the crops tomorrow. I've removed the humidome from my clones and most are taking it fairly well, although a couple are looking pretty droopy. Toughen up, clone! As long as I'm typing, does anyone know of a nute supplement to thicken up stems/branches? More carbs to make more starches? Any info appreciated. Smoke on...

Gonna be busy today! I'm putting a shelf into my veg room to seperate into a top area for vegging plants and a dimmer, warmer downstairs for cloning and momma plants. Whatever mom I want to clone next will move on up to the veg room for 2 weeks or so to get bushy, then rotate after pruning. I'll also be finishing my Aero-cloner, following Stinkbud's design, and cloning some Jack the Ripper for a planting in a couple weeks. I'll be taking pics along the way, so there should be a walkthrough of the day's activities up tonight.

And 9 hours later, I'm done. Had a real productive day. I transplanted 6 of my veg plants that'd gotten root-bound, revamped my veg room into a duplex veg/cloning room, built an aero-cloner a la Stinkbud (read that thread if you haven't, it's one of the best on the site), and then filled the fucker up. Nice... My medicine factory is now up and running, with flowering time being the only thing left as a limiting factor. I can live with that. You'll probably see more changes as this thing runs, if anyone's reading or does in the future, as I like researching stuff and then building it. But right now, it's bowl-thirty like a mug...

As you can see in an earlier post, I've had roots coming out the drain holes on my grow bags for the past week. Air is an awesome root pruner, but I figured they'd have a hard time going into flower root-bound, and I'm moving them in a few days. I thought half gallon bags might work well for my SOG based approach, but the plants just dominated the available space in 2 weeks, so I moved em up to 1 gallon bags. One downside to grow bags is that your medium seperates from the side of the bag before it's even halfway dry. This lends itself to roots gathering around the sides and bottom and the plant getting rootbound quicker. Still, I love the drainage and the loose soil you get with grow bags, and I also love them costing like 15 cents apiece. Here's a few of the girls pre-transplant...



And the work area, plus those roots I mentioned...




And a look at the girls after they upsized. hose Rippers really grow into some bizarre and asymmetrical formations. I love em. Truffula trees! Seuss owns!





Annnd here's my OG Kush. She went into a 3 gallon plastic pot instead of a bag. SHe's going to be staying in the veg room for a while to provide clones. She started a couple hours after this photo was taken.



And a final look at the post-transplant line-up. It's a jungle out there!

If you get that, then you're at least as old as I am. Fucking Tim Allen. So like I said, today I bisected my veg room to make a clone chamber in the bottom and a veg area in the top. It's looking good, but I wish I'd built my room about a foot taller so I'd have more overhead for the light. Here's where it's actually good to have a 250 watt, as there's very little heat to worry about. I'm thinking about trying one of those CMH bulbs that runs on an HPS ballast. It throws WAY more usable (photosynthesizable) light spectrum than HPS or regular MH. Anyone using one of these? Heard anything either way? Anyhow, here's the veg room at the beginning of the day. I'd already pulled the larger, rootbound plants out to transplant when I took this.



From there, it went to this...



And finally we ended up with an upstairs...



And a downstairs!



That's the Aero-cloner I built for under $50, following the directions provided by Stinkbud in his epic thread, linked here...

https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/116859-harvest-pound-every-three-weeks.html

... and a tray with my original clones. I though7888888888888888888888888888888 (sorry, that was my cat, Miss Tiggs... wife says leave it, it's cute...) about taking pics and documenting the process of making the cloner, but it's already laid out way better than I could do anyway in the original thread. I also skipped documenting the carpentry process. Like anyone's on this site for carpentry, right? So there's my new over/under veg room. Woooo!

So my best looking clone up and died on me. Weak! I left the humidome off em overnight and saw brown spots on the leaves the next morning. I think the RW just got too cold and the stem got soggy and rotted. That'll learn me to fix what ain't broke! Another showed sign of the same thing today, so I pulled it out of the RW and sure enough, brown sog. So that one got the funky part cut off and was then re-cloned in the aero-cloner. We'll see how it goes.
So with the bad news out of the way, here's the good:



We have roots! 9 days after taking the cuttings, 5 of them have visible roots. This is one of the Blue Cheese girls, more of whom have visible roots (4 to 1, actually) and none of whom showed ay any serious stress when the dome came off. Advantage: Cheese. To be fair, the Supers were closer to the window and probably got a lot colder at night. So after re-cloning the one Super Skunk, I started filling up my new cloner. I only had 16 baskets and inserts kicking around, so I didn't cut all the lid holes in Stink's OG design. I will, before the next time I load this thing up. This time around, I'm running the one re-cut Skunk, 9 Jack the Rippers, and 6 OG Kush. Should be a tasty batch when they're done.
So here's a little pic progression of my current cloning process. Not shown are scarrification of the cuttings and getting the RW on em before putting them in the net pots and dropping them in the cloner. It's worth mentioning that putting the clone in the neoprene, then holding it upside down and putting the RW over the stem, then finally, still upside down, adding the net pot, is WAY easier than the alternative juggle-and-pray method. Here's my beginners cloning guide.

Tools n stuff

Cut

It's a girl!

Cut again

Submerge.

Apply rooting aid.

Hat.

Into the RW and into its pot.

Home for the next couple weeks.
View attachment 1103003
Clean up.


All done!


We'll see how we do. My tap water is 400 ppm, which is no bueno for hydro. The cloner only needs about 4-5 gallons, so I got 3 gallons of distilled water and added 2 gallons of tap, for a final ppm of about 150. I added some Superthrive and Bio-root (very little), plus a little hydrogen peroxide, and pHed to 5.8ish (using the drops). I'll update when it seems worth it.

Nothing new, just got another bag of the Mystery Purps. Don't know what exact strain this is, but it's pretty as hell and tastes awesome to boot. Kinda sweet, grapey, hard to pinpoint in Cali these days with so many Purp strains flying around. I wouldn't even be growing GDP if it wasn't for the immediate increase in value due to the purpleness. I guess that's where the market's at, to me it just shows how little all these "weed snobs" actually know about getting high. Give me a big bag of potent sativa-dom and a fucking steam-roller, that's how we did it in the California mountains I grew up in. We used to get so high on well-grown long-flowering outdoor sativas that we'd literally trip balls. But I digress. More Mystery Purps while I wait for my Jack the Ripper.
Here's what happens when your cat gets jealous of the weed you're playing with and dives into the shot.


Doesn't she look proud of herself? Anyway, the weed...



I know it's supposed to be a grow journal, but the more work I put into growing, the more I'm amazed how little I've always appreciated the plant I get so much enjoyment from. Somebody worked their ass off on these nugs, so they get documented here. In a couple months, you'll see me smoking out of my own garden.

Looking good SB, subscribed