Organic COB Grow - Shiva Skunk

Sabaton · Apr 10, 2018

hello there :peace:

I'm gonna show you my way of organically growing cannabis indoors. On the one hand I will explain a lot of stuff regarding the basics (if requested), on the other hand I will start using some additives during the blooming stage and report about their effects on my garden. My current grow looked like this, only organic soil, no fertilizers:

I started this project around january by germinating 20 regular shiva skunks by sensi seeds. Because of their black friday offer I got 'em for half the price. 3 seeds didn't germinate and 3 seedlings showed their bad genetics during the first weeks. I wound up with 14 healthy plants, but unfortunately I only got 5 females out of those 14 plants. So I topped 'em a little to compensate the loss a little. Before I initiated flowering I cut off 4 cuttings from the 4 healthiest plants, so I had 16 cuttings in total. Luckily all of them rooted, thx to eazy plugs I didn't need any hormones like rhizopoen or clonex. The "mother plants" looked somewhat raped afterwards, but I didn't wanna waste any more time on them, also I wanted to test their genetics.

I used my diy cob panel with 4 CXB3590 3500K during the entire growth and bloom cycle. It is adjustable from 100w to 200w output and has an efficiency ranging from 65% to 70%, depending on the watts consumed.

I used the allmix by biobizz and filled it into growbags with 7,5 liters volume each. The advantage of using growbags is, that your plants will develop a root system, that penetrates the substrate evenly. This way you ensure that not a bit of earth/nutrients ends up unused. It also helps a lot avoiding wet root zones and root mold.

I've never used any fertilizers at all and it worked out very well. I also cut my tap water with deionized water (ratio 50:50) because it contains too much calcium and would've destroyed the balance of calcium and magnesium in the soil. During bloom I payed a little price for that, because the plants required higher levels of magnesium and my mixed water couldnt provide for that.

One plant is still ripening (sativa dominant phenotype) and the others were harvested yesterday. I cut whole plants that haven't been watered for 8 days and merely removed the fan leaves. For drying they were hung up in a wooden wardrobe. A nice effect of the wood is, that it absorbs the little moisture that the buds release during drying and thereby prevents mold. This is how they look:

I'm really impressed by the amount of pistils and the smell. This is the first time that I've grown regular seeds and it's true: plants that haven't been pollinated produce more resin than plants that have been. It was stated somewhere, that the extra resin production is an attempt to become "stickier" in case some male pollen comes along.

In a few days I will check again on the drying plants and eventually put them into glass jars with boveda humidipaks 62%. This is how the buds will be stored until I've turned them all into ashes :bigjoint:

As stated above I've taken cuttings and all of them rooted. Yesterday they were moved into the growing tent (hydroshoot hs80 by secret jardin) and are now enjoying the bright light of the cobs. They're still in their little plastic pots but around the weekend they will be potted into the 7,5 liter growbags with allmix. I will use 10-11 of those cuttings for the next cycle, the rest will be moved onto a big balcony, heavily topped and manipulated and grown as a scrog.

The soil in those pots is also allmix by biobizz. I don't recommend using this soil for seedlings that little. I've been there, done that and got rewarded with slow growth and sickly looking plants. But since the cuttings are way older than a seedling the same size they can handle the soil and they like it.

This cycle I will use some additives to enhance the quality of the buds, but I won't use fertilizers. I chose bud blood powder, bio big bud and bio bud candy by advanced nutrients. I assume that the big bud will take care of the extra amount of nutrients required by the larger amount of budding sites caused by the bud blood additive. The bud candy will only be used a little to enhance the awesome fruity smell and taste.

I'll also use a bulb with 10% uv-b and 30% uv-a to increase the potency by around 5% thc. The optimal ratio would be 12% uv-b and 30% uv-a, so this bulb comes really close to that,

I'd say that this is enough for the entry post, if you liked it or have any questions, let me know. Since I'm from germany I'd also like it if someone spots mistakes regarding my grammar and/or spelling and tells me about them.

I will make an update as soon as those cuttings are in the growbags and the buds have been manicured and moved into the jars.

keep it green :leaf:

Organic COB Grow - Shiva Skunk

Sabaton

Member