New location, New strains, New adventures, and New Problems

[Chronic Chrissy]

It will take me a while to catch you guys up.

This isn't my first time growing.
http://boards.cannabis.com/closet-ca...-afghanis.html

That show had to be shut down with the sale of our house. The plan was to move in, set up and get going again. But plans never seem to work out that way.

First my clone connection fell through. Then I spent a few bucks on seeds but had germination problems due to a water softner. This whole process took me about 3 months to work through.

Them one day right before christmas I recieved a gift from the guy who orders seeds for me. He told me they were 100% gaurenteed feminized seeds. I got a white rhino, and an afghani. A little before that time I was fortunate enought to find some sees in a bag of Acopulco Gold a friend brought me. So now I had three little sprouts.

While I was busy killing plants for a few monthe I was also busy building the first stage of my grow show.

In the back of our garage was a craft room the width of the garage and about 9' deep. In it is a full countertop and cupboards on one side near the door(my work area), the other side had a closet that opened to a space about 5'5"X8'. I set to work on the closet. I cut a new door since I would have to cover over the current one for the flower room and I didn't want to walk through the flower room to get to the veg with them on different cycles. I then covered and sealed all the surface area but the door with black and white poly. The closet was narrow and reached far back from the door so I put in a shelf at the top for ballasts, and a shelf going the lenghth about 5' high. At this same height there was a cross stud above the door to which I mounted a 100cfm exhaust fan.

Above the shelf I hung a mount of 5 18w 2' flouro tubes and a stronger super cfl. This is my cloning area. I set up my 400w MH ballast on the high deep shelf and hung the fixture and batwing reflector from the shelf bracket. I was fortunate enough to have fiber glass pig grates that snapped togather and four fit perfectly in the closet while leaving room for a stool to get to the clone area(I'm a short chick), these were perfect.

So I am very very patient growing my 3 sprouts with care because they are to be my mothers. When they are big enough and strong enough I top them to branch them out, and clone the tops. As time went on they grew beatifully and rapidly with little nutes. I continued to clone while I waited for preflowers.

One day I think my AG is a male but I wait it out to be sure. It was started at my friends house under her bathroom light(long story). The I was sure it was a male when I saw pretty yellow flowers one day. But I thought it was pretty so I put it under the skylight in the bathroom and neglected it as a house plant, and threw out the clones.

This made me paranoid about the rest of my plants even though they were supposed to be gaurenteed females. I called and asked the guy I got them from a few times just so he could reassure me, which he did. I waited and watched. The next one to show signs was the Aghani, it kinda looked like the AG though before the flowers came right out, so I called him again and he promised me. Then the day came when my little Afghani move on to a new stage. It spread it's leaves and anounced to the world "I Am A..."

Tune in next time to for the reveal of the sexual outcome....

Chronic Chrissy Reviewed by Chronic Chrissy on 06-20-2008. New location, New strains, New adventures, and New Problems It will take me a while to catch you guys up. This isn't my first time growing. http://boards.cannabis.com/closet-cabinet-growing/97106-first-dedicated-dryer-grow-6-norhterns-3-afghanis.html That show had to be shut down with the sale of our house. The plan was to move in, set up and get going again. But plans never seem to work out that way. First my clone connection fell through. Then I spent a few bucks on seeds but had germination problems due to a water softner. This whole Rating: 5

[DrSpoof]

was reading about your problems on your water thread... glad to hear you got them all sorted out. will be following the log :thumbsup:

DrSpiggity

[Chronic Chrissy]

was reading about your problems on your water thread... glad to hear you got them all sorted out. will be following the log :thumbsup:

DrSpiggity

Gosh Thanks:jointsmile: I remember having a following in my last log and miss all those guys.

Anyways Just so you know I grow in coco and perlite 9/1, but at this time I was also mixeing in 1or 2 parts sheep manure. My watersource at this time is well water which has not go through the water softener(learnt that the hard way). The pH was high at about 8(Thank you americans for polluting our lake with your sewage, sorry I can't resist). From time to time they would get a feeding of the three part advanced nutrients line.

[Chronic Chrissy]

Oh yeah! I guess you want to know the sex. It was a male! I was so fuming mad, not a single female flower so there is no way this was even a stressed hermi! I had 22 clones growing strong and 3 in forced flower. Needless to say I loaded them up in my car and threatened to leave them on the guys shop step after I was throughly disrespected when I approached him to refund my gaurentee. I didn't do it though, wanted to but didn't.

Luckily though the white rhino turned out to be mostly female, we have Hermi issues but more on that later.

At this point I also relized that my garden had a Mg overdose so I completely removed the Cal/Mg suppliment.

At the same time I had aquired a 100w MH set up that I installed about two weeks ago, to replace the 400w. And I had sealed off the flower room at about 8x5.5. I installed my only 400w hps set up, which was a step down from the 1000w they were getting in veg(I know, am I bad!). I got a 120cfm fan hooked in a low corner that pulled air from the garage(Don't worry I'll show you rough blueprints sometime). And I cut a hole on the same wall but the high opposite corner for exhaust.

(please note my set up has been upgraded since then.)

The veg rooms cycle was set for 6:30pm-10:30am, the flower room at 9:30-9:30. We had alot of cold problems especially at night and it took alot of fucking around with heaters and temperatures, by them it was consistantly warmer out.

I took advantage of the cold and melted ice blocks from outside to water my flowing plants at that time just cause I still didn't trust that my husband was right when he said the one tap didn't go through the water softner. The Ice water will come into play later with my current water problem as a major clue to my issue.

So at this point I can understand how all these stresses could have turned my fem WR seed hermi and took full responsibility. However at a later date I was informed that his seeds were improperly stored, and over 8 years old. I was clearly ripped off. And to add salt to the wound he was charging 40$ for 12 for everyone else, and my price was 20$ a seed! We had many words and I must say he quickly relized that I was not one who would be fuck about like the rest of the hicks out here.

As the season warmed I switched back to the "safe" tap water, and began Using more nutes including Big Bud but followed the directions instead of taking the time to calculate everything out for myself. I noticed as the plants matured they yellowed, I flushed often, and attributed the water color to the manure because the pH appeared stable. Soon they started yellowing sooner and sooner.

My flower cycle started as I moved mature plants over. Once I had about 10 in the space I measured everything out and determined I should have enough space and lights by then to put 2 plants in every three days, on a 65 day cycle that is about 45 plants all in pairs 2 days apart. This was really fun because while everything else was going down hill I was able treat each differently and observe results.

At this point there is no more manure in my mix, and the vegging plants are trasplanted into 1 gl grow bags(I LOVE my grow bags!) before they go into flower.

Even with out the manure I was still having yellowing though, So I assumed I was over fertilizing, I flushed, reduced my concentrations and waited for them to perk back up.

Then came my first harvest.....

[Chronic Chrissy]

The weight on the first 4 or so plants wasn't that bad at almost an oz each, however since it was a hermi we had seeds lots of seeds. The whole bottom quarter of the plant was fully seeded, and the rest was hit of miss. The further up you went the less seeds but there were always a few.

I will admit to spending hours picking male flowers and giving up after a few weeks.

I thought no problem though because I know what went wrong and now that the stress is relieved I should slowly notice an improvement.

As time went on the yellowing moved to younger and younger plants. Since my nute solution was so low and the manure was still in the mix for a chunk of the plants from before I thought that I was over watering them and drowning them out. I picked up another moisure meter(I've broken like 6 already) and instead of watering from the top I would plunk the plants in an ice cream pail and keep topping it up till there was 2" of water on the bottom of the pail. The coco absorbed the water up into the pot over the period of about 2 minutes I would then put the pot back out on the grates and let the water run out the bottom pulling O2 back into the soil. But no improvement.

Then it occured to me that with such a heavy seed load the plants were probably being striped of their nutrients. Since the bottom quarter of the plants were the ones the pollinated themselves I cut them all out in the first few weeks of flowering. But my harvests kept gettin smaller and now early flowing plants were becoming stunted and small with few branches. I thought that this was still them recovering from all the overdoses.

Lets take a break from the flower room so I can fill you in on some lost and new strains....

[Chronic Chrissy]

Once I found out that my afghani and WR were male/hermi I knew one of the best things to do was replace the strain. I called up a buddy and he got me 9 of the saddest looking, mouldy stemed, small over watered clones you had ever seen, in about 3 weeks. The new strain was Juicy Fruit. Of those 9, 7 were useless to me and ended up not even worth my time within a few days of trying to nurse them. The 2 that survived grew ok but had mould damage to the base of the stem. As soon as they were big enough I topped them and rooted the clone to be mothers and through the original 2 clones in the flower room march 30. Once the new set of clone grew I topped them again, rooted the clones and they are now moving through the line as I wait for each new clone I can take off the JF.

But what has happened to the Alcopulco Gold? When I moved it into the house it looked just like a little bushy tree with a 1/4" stump. Up under the skylight she stretched right out and 5 main stalks took over. I took it down and watered it in the sink with my regular houseplants and must admit forgot about it sometimes to the point where it was wilted and never transplanted it. But it seemed to like the early winter sun from the skylight well enough in the steamy bathroom to stay pretty and got lots of kind compliments from unknowing admirers. Then one day I took it down to water it and there were long white pistals everywhere past the bottom quarter and not a single male flower above that. I thought ok lets play with a little simple breeding. I pruned it down to the main 5 branchs(well 4 and little tall number 5) and thinned it right out. I then picked the lower male flowers and dusted and set them right on top of the new buds. Then i ran and grabbed some WR pollen and put it on the top of a separate bud, and left the othe 2(3) alone. I put it back up in the bathroom and let it be. Needless to say it got pretty much the same sad level of care.

As time went on the days got longer and the buds fluffed and grew but I didn't want them to regress. Since there were no more male flowers on it I put it in the flower room with the rest of the plants and watched it puff out amazingly. I wasn't planning on harvesting it just for smoke, I wanted to wait till seeds rattled in the calyxs. But as time went on the calyxs were'nt swelling or busting open.

While AG was in the veg room the yellowing started to set in and move up the plant with the increased light to process soon I had 18" sticks, no fan leaves, with just loonie sized fluffy buds at the top with their bud leaves. But the damned thing kept growing and prevaling with larger buds than I ever expected for such a tortured plant.

A few weeks ago upon close inspection I noticed a hollow bract/calyx with two hairs coming out. and when I pulled on the hairs a tiny shrived seed was attached. they were everywhere. I figured that withholding water caused the seeds to regress after a point in production. With no reason to wait any more and no idea how long the plant had been flowering I took the tighter top buds and left two branches with small lower buds on it and moved it back into veg where it sits now with little buds.

Since I was doubtful about seeds I was hoping to reveg it and take a nice healthy clone to make a mother.

The bud dried of course and we have found 5 well formed seeds all at the nodes close to the mainstem that survived. The bud itself smells lemony, with a touch of spice. It smokes well and has a lovely energetic high, I love it so much that my small stash of what is left is rationed.

While my flower room was in production earlier I was able to get alot of construction done to the room, including lights, fans, and placement of plants into three stages but that will be discussed next time and hopefully I can make up some pics to go with it to creat a more complete picture....

ps there is so much more to come and lots that all happens silmutanitously including an outdoor grow and issues with that, just give me time and bear with me, and you will learn alot of what not to do and just how much abuse a plant can take.

[stinkyattic]

Just outta curiosity... the original source of the White Rhino... those weren't Nirvana Standard seeds by any chance, were they? I only got ONE non-hermi female!

[Chronic Chrissy]

Just outta curiosity... the original source of the White Rhino... those weren't Nirvana Standard seeds by any chance, were they? I only got ONE non-hermi female!

They were claimed to be K and C seeds out of BC. I wouldn't be suprised if the Asshole just got self pollinated seeds from an associates white rhino. With what I have learnt about this guy since, and the confrontation we had in town I could start a whole thread showing Noobs what happens when you allow your trusting human nature to overpower your paranoid known facts. The worst thing about it is that I knew better and I knew things weren't adding up. But I went ahead with it anyways because it was my only option at the time and only available resource. I don't know why but when you are up and running everyone is giving you seeds and clones, but when you have nothing everyone seems to be dry, go figure.

[justanotherbozo]

They were claimed to be K and C seeds out of BC. I wouldn't be suprised if the Asshole just got self pollinated seeds from an associates white rhino. With what I have learnt about this guy since, and the confrontation we had in town I could start a whole thread showing Noobs what happens when you allow your trusting human nature to overpower your paranoid known facts. The worst thing about it is that I knew better and I knew things weren't adding up. But I went ahead with it anyways because it was my only option at the time and only available resource. I don't know why but when you are up and running everyone is giving you seeds and clones, but when you have nothing everyone seems to be dry, go figure.

lol, i would love to have been there to witness the confrontation

anyway, good luck with this grow, i've skimmed your other threads and it looks like i have some catching up to do, i like your spirit of invention.

[Chronic Chrissy]

lol, i would love to have been there to witness the confrontation

anyway, good luck with this grow, i've skimmed your other threads and it looks like i have some catching up to do, i like your spirit of invention.

The Dryer! You know I couldn't get it up the stairs when we moved and I had leave it behind? I can only imagine what the new owners must have guessed iot was for all frankinsteined and all. I didn't have room for it here any ways.

"Lordy, Lordy, it be pouring!
I be dancing to the song of the rain!"

We have buckets falling from the sky in quick 15 minute bursts. I can't remember the last time I was this excited about so much rain. It was so nice the last few days I put my rain catchers away, so when it started I was zooming so fast to get it all set up again and emptying bucket after bucket cause it was coming down so fast. I forgot I was wearing my white top and gauze peasent skirt! Needless the say the neighbors must think I am mad, H sure got a kick out of it though. I love it when my husband thinks I'm sexy. and I love the rain!

To those of you who this doesn't make sense to don't worry you'll get it once my log is current.