Durban Poison Day 3

[RastaKaze]

Just a quick update. This is a pic of my fave's 3rd day under the sun :) Tell me what ya think

[HARDDON]

Perfect.

Place some white marble chips on the soil surface.

Just a good practice.

[RastaKaze]

Why the white marble chips? What is their purpose :confused:

[HARDDON]

Light reflection to the main stem where the first secondaries will come out. If used from your current plant age, it will help your plant grow wide as much as tall.

Ideally white marble as it is very non pourous and thus wont hold water or soak it away from your topsoil. Non pourous will also prevent ground mold.

It is also easy to clean which you will have to do once in a while especially if you grace your plants with some dark bat guano.

Light relection is in reality as much as important as anything. Light should be bounced until absorbed by green foilage as much as possible. I cannot stress this enuff. Your light is either absorbed by green plant matter or some other substance.

Eliminate the light loss due to the non plant materials as much as you can. Every single bit helps.

You grow room with lights should be blindingly bright. It should look like the second coming of Christ with light :)

Any and everything you can do to measure up to that standard should be done and will help you achieve remarkable growth up to 28 days with floro / cfls.

Read and look at 9ski9's HARDDONA UPDATE thread to see the transition from seedling to current.

I think you might learn a whole lot...just ignore all the bullshit posts....we had a lot of them :)

[RastaKaze]

Is it something I should be able to find at my local gardening store? I'm off to check right now... lol I said the same thing about the coming of christ when I first plugged my light in... go to the thread called "RASTA'S NEW BOX" to see my setup. Light is now 12" away from the top of the plants and temps are maintained at 76-77 farenheit . Not to bad eh? :cool:

[chonged]

hey rasta lookin good....what type of soil are u using ?

[RastaKaze]

I beleive it's scott's 'potting soil'... I got a big bag of it for $3 at the home depot.

[RastaKaze]

Hey, I just got back from the gardening store. No white marble chips :( They had gravel, and perlite... Anyway I decided to make some reflectors outta this thick bleached drawing paper I have, they seem to be working great as far as reflecting the light back up goes. And HD, what do you mean when you say secondaries? The first set of three bladed leaves?

[HARDDON]

Try and find some white rock.....marble or not....dont let the paper get wet it will mold on you and could threaten your tomato harvest.

On our tomato plant....you have one main stem. then your leaves.....at first, single blade, like now, then three fingers and 5 and 7 and so on.

Those fan leaves meet at the main stem on opposite sides. IN the tiny nook or crevice between the main stem and the leaf stem...is your site of future secondary growth.

It is the plant matter that will emerge from this spot that creates all growth other than just a main stem with leaves.

It is where the growth emerges that will form all buds, all clones and everything else.

It is the secondaries that make or break a yeild. IN fact, the main kola is nothing but a whole shitload of secondaries grown close together to form one bud.

All buds come from these sites.

When your plant is mature, the leaves from the main stem will fail to grow directly opposite one another and will instead grow at alternating levels on the main stem and on the now long secondary stems.

Hence the alternating nodes that identify the maturity of the plant.

In the attached pic, you see the main stem...then you see the fan leaf stem and then right in between in secondary growth.

This is a 5 day old seedling....with proper lighting and reflection, you can see secondary growth on a seedling 5 days old emerging.

You need GREAT KELVINS to get these so early...but this is where you want to focus your plant energies and lights and get these sites going at every node your plant has.

These are where your branches are formed and all other growth comes from....otherwise you wind up with a stem and fan leaves....

[RastaKaze]

Hey, just got back from a stroll in the park. Me and my buddy collected a good bag full of little white quartz rocks. Is quartz ok to use??? If so should I lightly sprinkle it or put a decent layer on?

[HARDDON]

Fuckin thieves. :D

Yes that will be better than dirt :)

Make sure you wash it in a water / bleach solution to kill any eggs, microbes or enemy life forms :)

RINSE WELL, ALLOW TO DRY.

Just enuff to cover all dark soil.

[RastaKaze]

Ok cool all is done but one thing, Hard? I notice the leaves darkening in some areas on several of the plants that had received more light initially (Germed directly in soil, so some popped in two days, the rest in 3-4), not to an unhealthy color or anything, but a 'forest green' I guess is what you would call it... This is normal, right? I'll give you an update after it's fourth day is up so you can compare it to yesterday, as I'm not sure it's growing at an excellent rate... I could be wrong though I'm new at this...

Peace

[RastaKaze]

Also I noticed in the pic you attached that you have a good inch or so from the soil to the top. Is foil folded over the sides a big contributor to getting secondaries in early?

[RastaKaze]

And we shall never know...

[whyamiwhite]

rasta, hey man lookin good so far. remember to keep me posted lol.

[RastaKaze]

No doubt man :cool:

[Melton420]

keep posting