Outdoor grow journal - Start to Finish

forestgreen said:

Huffy: I can't figure out where to buy the fish emulsion by itself. How does it come? I only see it sold as an additive to packaged soil. My soil is a 50/50 mixture of the rich soil from the forest (complete with worm castings and rotten vegetation) and peat moss. I also threw in a handful of perlite in each pot. I am very happy with the composition of the soil. It looks rich and is nice and fluffy, which is very important for root development.

This is interesting. On one of my babies, I saw a trail of missing chlorophyll. I looked underneath and found a tiny caterpillar. I quickly removed it and checked the other plants. Wasn't expecting a pest problem this soon!

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It comes in liquid form, in a bottle. looks kinda like melted chocolate but smells AWFUL. I usually pick it up a plant nusuary. Dont go to Lowes or Walrmart or any place like that because they wont have it. If all else fails you could buy some online, its only like $7/qt. One bottle will last you a long time since you only mix a cap full per gallon of water.

It seems like i always have a bugs munching my girls, can never rid of them completely. As long as those damn deer stay away

Thanks for checking my journal out man. I'll be sure to stop by here to see how things are.

goods pretty good so far.. keep em green

Day 11 of Afghan grow

I really screwed up guys. If you can help me, that would be great. I woke up this morning to find that bugs had been munching away on my sprouts. There were also spiderwebs on all of them. I needed to spray them with some sort of insecticide, so I decided to go the "safe" route and make my own. I included a little dishwashing soap, a little canola oil, a little hot sauce, 1/4 apple cider vinegar, and the rest water. I sprayed the plants down, let them dry for an hour, came back and saw this...



The leaves have turned a purplish/brown color and curled up. I immediately washed the leaves with fresh water and flushed the soil out. The picture above was taken after I washed and flushed. So did I screw up these guys completely or will they clean themselves out?

I'm really pissed about this. Next time I'm just using a garden safe insecticide. No making my own bullshit. Let this be a lesson to other new growers. If you try to make your own insecticide, you might fuck up your plants like me!

Yeah, hot sauce and soap on the leaves can't be good. I would avoid spraying with anything but pure water. I hear those pest strips they have at lowe's work well. Just buy a bunch and lay them next to the plants. The bugs are supposed to be attracted to the chemical in the strip and get stuck. Not sure about spiders though. If you get an insecticide spend the extra money and get the best stuff that for sure won't hurt your plants. Order from the internet if you need to. Every mistake is a valuable lesson. Don't beat yourself up about it. These plants are unexpectedly hardy. I had some clones that looked to be on death's door from too much light. Leaves 85% brown and curled up. Looks like they'll pull through. Don't lose hope.

I did something similar with mine too. I made something from coffee, hotsauce, and dishsoap and then realized it should have been tobacco juice, hotsauce and dishsoap, and that burned the crap out of them too. Then I made my own neem extract mixed with pyrenthren and that worked better but was messy to make and seemed to ferment easily.
So anyway, mine are all still alive and well and as has been before these plants are quite hardy and will probably surprise you.
Goods luck and happy growing.

Update

Thanks for jumping in to offer your thoughts guys. It looks like I've ROYALLY screwed up all my plants, including my bagseed. I don't doubt the possibility that these guys could come back from the dead and miraculously produce a great harvest, but the question here is, do I have the time and space to doctor these back to life? The answer is really "no". As I've already seen from my bagseed, when you burn a plant this early in life, you can really stunt its growth. I haven't seen progress in about a week.

For those following along now or in the future, this is a great testament that too much love really can destroy your crop. Its also a testament to the fact that newbies WILL make mistakes... even somewhat intelligent newbies!

Here's the good news in all this... I just germinated my remaining 5 Afghan seeds and planted them last night. I should see sprouts in about a day. I'm going to call this "day 1" and a fresh new start. Hopefully some of you have the patience to stick around and follow this through! I also have 5 mazar x afghan seeds to germinate soon, so this grow aint over! As for my current plants, I'm most likely going to toss them.

Here's the evidence...


Bagseed



Damaged sprouts

dude .. what are you doing to your plants?! come on man

man....all you needed is diatomatious earth...... fuck all that hot sauce, soap and vinager shit.

If i use anything other then diatomatious earth, its sevendust (chemical) which kills everything it touches...

remember to K.I.S.S. thats what i tell myself

Keep It Simple Stupid

sorry about your mishap

You are both right. Whenever I researched homemade formulas, it seemed like everyone included hot sauce and vinegar so I figured it was a safe bet. NEVER again. Anyways, I have a garden safe insecticide spray that I had purchased previously. I just doused my bagseed plant with it as an experiment to see how it reacts (its trash anyway). Its made from natural plant oils, so I think its a safe bet for the future.

Update

Because yesterday was such a shitty day, I decided to purchase more seeds for the hell of it. I bought some mango seeds which should come soon. If I dont screw anything else up, I should have a nice variety: Afghan, Mango, Mazar/Afghan, and Trainwreck.

where did you pick up the Trainwreck if you dont mind me asking?

Its actually from an eighth I bought, so technically its bagseed. It was a good smoke though, but I guess the strain isn't 100% verifiable.

The bagseed could still pull through to be a nice plant but the sprouts look like toast. Try to keep one of these older plants alive. You said it yourself, it's good to have a plant to experiment on. There are still plenty of problems you could encounter before flowering and during flowering. Wouldn't you rather those mishaps happen to a plant you don't really care about? Learn as much as you can from the plants you already have. See if you can nurse the bagseed back to life. Then you know these new seeds germinating will really have a good shot.

forestgreen said:

Its actually from an eighth I bought, so technically its bagseed. It was a good smoke though, but I guess the strain isn't 100% verifiable.

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ah i see, well it will still be dank as fuck. ive been looking for some trainwreck but cant find it.

mared juwan said:

The bagseed could still pull through to be a nice plant but the sprouts look like toast. Try to keep one of these older plants alive. You said it yourself, it's good to have a plant to experiment on. There are still plenty of problems you could encounter before flowering and during flowering. Wouldn't you rather those mishaps happen to a plant you don't really care about? Learn as much as you can from the plants you already have. See if you can nurse the bagseed back to life. Then you know these new seeds germinating will really have a good shot

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I couldnt agree more. That bag seed doesnt look too far gone yet. Once you get a plant growing like wild fire, you dont what to alter anything cause it could stunt it or equal death. You want to keep its momentum going. Hope this helps a little

huffy420 said:

ah i see, well it will still be dank as fuck. ive been looking for some trainwreck but cant find it.

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I don't know anything about this company but I found trainwreck seeds for you here: TrainWreck

BigGuyTok'n said:

I don't know anything about this company but I found trainwreck seeds for you here: TrainWreck

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Thanks. I attempted to make a purchase from them one time but they would not ship to me dispite their site saying they ship worldwide.

K.I.S.S. yeah... hope all goes well for you.... interestingly enough I have given my babies nutes from as little as 8 days after sprout, and they always love it... good luck

Grow update

Thanks again to everyone for your constructive comments. I feel kinda stupid for managing to kill my perfectly healthy plants. I did test my garden safe insecticide on my bagseed plant, and it still looks fine, even after a good dousing. I'll be using this next time bugs come around.

All five of my remaining Afghans have sprouted and look great. I mixed the soil with a little more peat moss this time, so the medium is extra fluffy for fast root development. I'm adding more soil as the plant grows to fill in around the base of the stem. I'll take pictures once they get a little bigger. I'm tired of posting pictures of sprouts on here. Its a bit repetitive and depressing!

I'll be germinating 5 Afghan x Mazar on Saturday, and I'm waiting on 10 Mango seeds as well as 5 more Afghan x Mazar to arrive.

Update

Its been almost a week since the fiasco, and things are quite a bit better. My 5 new Afghan sprouts were doing very well until something came along and killed one (maybe a bird). So now I have four healthy Afghans at four days old, as shown here...




My bagseed is actually showing signs of growth! I might just throw it out the forest and see how it does. Unfortunately, for its age (just over 30 days), its only about 3" high. Here's a picture...



Hell, two if not three of my burned-to-shit Afghan sprouts might actually pull through! Because these guys have been through so much stress, does that mean they have a greater chance to be males or hermie, or is that BS? Here's a couple pictures of my recovering plants...





I'll be starting my bagseed and maybe these recovering sprouts with a very small dose of nutes tomorrow, unless you guys think its a bad idea.

Alright, a good news update! That bagseed is a warrior, give it a chance to grow big and strong. Looks like the sprouts are pretty tough, too. Light nutes will be fine at this point but don't spray on the leaves, just in their feed water. Hermie is a genetic trait that can be encouraged to develop by stress just like cancer is encouraged to develop by smoking tobacco. Since you don't really know the genetic background, it's impossible to know whether or not you will have a problem.