Hello Everyone,
It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted any updates with the indoor cannabis garden.
This is mostly because things have been moving along a little slowly.
I've encountered the challenge of a fungus gnat infestation. A small black fruit fly looking insect that has proven immensely difficult for me to eradicate. I've been spraying daily with this "Safer" brand insecticidal soap, which is a neem oil free soapy concentrate that is supposed to be pretty safe for most plants. It hasn't caused any harm to the plants and does seem rather safe, however it has not completely gotten rid of the gnats, but does a great job of killing off the flying adults and has kept the population very low.
This daily spraying makes cleaning of my grow areas a much more frequently needed chore that is not enjoyable due to the filmy substance this insecticide leaves behind. To put it bluntly, it's a pain in the ass to clean daily, but at least my grow areas are very clean as a result.
I've switched my tent to the 12/12 flowering light cycle about two weeks ago and have two adult plants in there.
One of them showed the first signs of female today!
The smaller of the two has still not revealed sex.
I will be happy no matter what happens because at least I have one known female and it is the larger of the two plants! Very exciting!
This is the moment where months of tedious work and care for the plants pays off.
I've always been very lucky with my grows and have never had an all male scenario. I've even had grows where every single plant turned out female, and nothing is more exciting than when this happens for a cannabis grower.
The plant on the right is the female! The one on the left is still unknown. I don't want to take any guesses because then I feel I'll jinx myself, but I do feel it looks like a female plant.
These are not the largest cannabis plants I've ever grown, but they are very healthy and nicely stress trained to grow in a bushy form and should hold the weight of heavy buds just fine.
This is the plant on the left, and we can see the branches have been manipulated with LST training clips. It's a squatty plant and has relatively fat leaves. I'm hopeful it is a female.
In this photograph of the plant on the right, we catch a glimpse of the wispy white pistil, the clear cut indicator of a female cannabis plant.
I've also never grown under lighting quite as powerful as what I'm using now, so I expect the yields will be substantial compared to previous harvests, despite the plants being squattier.
It may even be beneficial to have this nice distance from the lights for optimal bud growth and minimizing of potential light burn. I'm currently running the main Phlizon light at max power with no indication of light burn for over a week now.
Given that this flowering area is small, I feel I commenced flowering cycle at the perfect time, and the plants are now in the final "stretch" phase.
Things are going to get exciting from here.
Let's take a peek over in the vegetation room.
These are the three I've been keeping in vegetation. They have already been transplanted into the final pots and will probably be ready to move in about 2-4 weeks. I'm going to grow them as big as I can get away with since they are not topped and bushed out.
It's also apparent that I mutilated the main stalks with LST clips. I'm not sure what I was thinking, I was just having a fun time with these clips and didn't really think it through :D
But either way we will adapt and overcome any problems that occur because of this.
The plant in the middle has continued to be my favorite of these three. It seems that the other two might be the same genetics, and this one in the middle is something different. It's hardier and seems to be doing a bit better in this environment than the other two. I have no fans currently for this grow area, but I will get one soon. My box fan burned out at the same time my 3D printer fan burned out. I've been having some bad luck with fans lately.
Some of you might remember that two weeks ago I planted some of this microgreens lettuce in some 3D printed planters that I designed. I really have never seen lettuce quite like this stuff but it indeed tastes like lettuce and grows very small.
Let's check out how the lettuce is coming along.
The growth is exploding in my very sexy little planters. The lettuce should grow to about three times this current size, and I will have some delicious tasting micro lettuce to add to my meals. Awesome!
How about the Graptopetalum/Sedum succulents? Let's take a look!
They are also in some sexy 3D printed pots. I didn't design these one's, found them on thingiverse and really love them. They have drain holes built in and the tray is connected as all one piece.
The succulents are doing really good :)
The green onions I regrow from the grocery store are nothing to brag about, but they have been steadily producing fresh shoots and providing me with fresh green onions whenever I need them!
That is pretty much it for now. Within the next week I am planning to start four of the Big Mack Superstar cannabis seeds that I got from @jonyoudyer, and am super excited to embark on growing this awesome strain.
Me and my kitty cat Covid appreciate all of the amazing comments and support! Your time is a valuable commodity and I do my best to respond to everyone of you wonderfully amazing people on the Hive blockchain!
Thank you for stopping by, have a great day! -@futuremind
Big Mack is excellent
From the pics I've seen it sure looks like a beast genetic in every way. I'm super excited to grow it and feel honored to have been gifted the strain. Thanks for stopping by bro!
I wonder if you could experiment a bit regarding the soil you use for the plants? A few years ago I put a balcony box on my balcony that was about four metres long and it took a lot of soil to fill it. We retrieved it with the wheelbarrow. We found a dredged spot of topsoil nearby and took it. It seemed to have everything in there, micro-organisms, worms and enough rotten to not need to take any more fertiliser. The plants we then planted in the spring thrived quite splendidly. In addition, we built a small wood storage shed as a compost collection point.
I wonder if more diversity stimulates growth. The lettuce and succulents seem to reflect that thought. Do with garlic what you did with the spring onions, the green stems are really delicious!
When we started a bed in my brother's garden this spring and scattered seeds, there were such a variety of species that began to grow quickly that we were able to watch it happen. It was a great experience! There was not even an infestation of one particular type of insect, the insects we saw were of different types and a natural balance seems to have formed there. Of course, a garden exposed to wind and weather is no comparison to an artificial biosphere, but I wonder how far you could push it. Presumably, however, you would need a slightly larger area and therefore more light and heat and again more equipment and so on. LOL - a condo has its limits, doesn't it?
P.S. Our observations led us to conclude that the competition for sunlight made the very many plants in a heap grow bigger and faster. I am almost certain that there is something to this theory.
Hello my friend,
thank you for the great comment!
I've tried some experimenting with composting soil in my home with some eggshells and adding slow release nutrient pellets while keeping the soil moist, but the results were not very good lol. It produced (just a guess) an acidic soil that damaged the plants afterwards with what looked like burned leaves. I am not a hundred percent sure because I didn't have a PH test kit during this time.
That's really cool how you achieved these results with living micro-organisms. We have some gardeners here who swear by keeping lively soil. There is definitely something to this, rather than keeping a completely sterile biosphere lol. After all, nature does not contain such a thing as sterile soil, so it seems counterintuitive to try to maintain sterile soil. The small ecosystem is not balanced in this sense.
This idea about plants competing for light and promoting growth is very true my friend. To me it's a theory that is grounded in logic and just makes perfect sense if we look at how nature operates. Since I have placed some cannabis plants in an area with other breeds of plants, the cannabis seems to be growing at a much faster rate, likely in this competitive energetic field. It's very cool actually, and shows that cannabis is a very dominating plant in an environment with other plants. It's evolved quite well! And furthermore is adapted to produce more females than males, naturally, through selective breeding with cultivators! Super cool, we've helped evolve them to be more feminine! haha
Yeah a condo definitely has its limits lol. Even further limited by small tents to maximize light efficiency. It's quite a challenge to grow this wild plant indoors, but the rewards are very gratifying. Perhaps planting some garlic is a good idea. I've considered it, as it's one of my favorite herbs and I think it's very healing for the body to ingest daily.
Thanks again, you always bring some thought provoking dialogue to the table 🤗
I am speechless reading what a sophisticated science it is to grow cannabis!!
And your plants look so healthy and beautiful!!
Thank you for sharing !!
Your mastery is impressive!!
That’s so true! I learnt a lot about life, myself and gardening on my avocado tree journey....
The Nature trying to guide us and we trying to follow like blind men :) experimenting, trying new things, failing and trying again :))
And sometimes it feels that the plants themselves are trying to support you and offering moral comfort and caring pardon for every failure:))
Thank you for the kind words and support @lauralauze!
I try my best and I'm always learning new things along the way! :)
Everything looks sooo good! How nice that you have so many living things to care for.
Those flies were the last straw for my cannabis production. I did everything: glass in the soil, ACV in little dishes, Safer spray. Nothing touched them at all. It sounds like you've gotten them under control at least.
Question: you just plant an onion?
Great post !
These little flies are quite impossible to get rid of it seems. I'm to the point of just managing the population and some days I don't even spray. Everyday they just explode with more no matter what I do lol.
It's stressful but I'm kind of to the idgaf point.
Thanks for the kind words! The plants are coming along really well despite the flies, and they are easier to manage in the tent at least.
Yeah I just buy them from the grocery store, and they are pretty much the length as seen in the photos when bought, then I slice them all at once at the base and use them all immediately or they wilt within hours. Then I stick the ends in a cup for a few days with a little water, letting the roots get moist and grow a little, (they chop the roots down to the nub, probably for packaging and to make it harder for re-growing so we have to buy more) then stick them in the dirt and they take off like wildfire. It didn't work as well with my old coir based soil, but the green onions love this Happy Frog stuff :)
I'm going to try it with some farmer's market onions, which do still have the roots on. I love this idea.
In my country, it is illegal to grow cannabis, although it grows on its own on the plot behind the fence.
It would make sense then, to inconspicuously help it along. :)
Looking healthy.
Thanks a lot man!
Nice plants! Loving those 3D printed planters!
Thanks a lot man! Love that song too, was nice to listen to while responding to comments here haha :D
It was late.... LATE AT NIGHT.. robot dance moves
Your plants look healthy nice thick trunk 💪
Please consider entering my contest
Thanks so much @loonatic! I will head over and take a look at your contest my friend :)
Superb! This is industry!
What characteristics of the plant help you determine if it's male or female?
The printed planters are looking spiffy!
Thanks for stopping by @litguru!
It's rather easy to determine with cannabis plants. The pistils are the indicator. The female plants produce them, and they are wispy white hairs, not present on the males. The males produce "ball sacks" of pollen, to inject into the females hehe ;D
This has given me an idea to create a post showing macros of the feminine parts and how to determine one from the other. A cannabis birds and bees like post! hahah ;)
Thanks for the compliment about the 3D printed pots. They are pretty sleek looking in my opinion, and I can proudly say they are one of a kind! :)
You can't make this up. Nature has a sense of humor.
Howdy @futuremind my friend, just dropped by to check on you, as we having chatted in a while.
Looks like you are well on your way! Congratulations!
Check out my new "Bajoran" look! ha ha ha
↑Upvoted↑ and ←Reblogged→
Hello my friend,
Thank you for checking on me. I am doing well, ups and downs as always but hanging in there :)
I love that "Bajoran" look!
I hope you are maintaining well yourself. We will have to catch up again soon, and I need to make my way over to your blog too to see what you've been up to!
Thanks for the upvote and reblog, much love to you Jerry 🤗
I haven't been "up to" much of late, dealing with the travesties that life keeps tossing my way, but I am above ground and breathing.
The alternative is unacceptable! 😏
Such a huge improvement! Great work dude
Thank you bro! Trying my best. The other plant showed female as well today too!
What a beautiful little garden! :3
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 80/100) Liquid rewards.
Thank you my friend for the compliment! And thank you also for the generous tip! 🤗
Thank you for sharing this amazing post on HIVE!
Your content got selected by our fellow curator @priyanarc & you just received a little thank you via an upvote from our non-profit curation initiative!
You will be featured in one of our recurring curation compilations and on our pinterest boards! Both are aiming to offer you a stage to widen your audience within and outside of the DIY scene of hive.
Join the official DIYHub community on HIVE and show us more of your amazing work and feel free to connect with us and other DIYers via our discord server: https://discord.gg/mY5uCfQ !
If you want to support our goal to motivate other DIY/art/music/homesteading/... creators just delegate to us and earn 100% of your curation rewards!
Stay creative & hive on!
Thanks so much @diyhub community, and @priyanarc for the manual curation!
Very healthy plants and it has grown so much.
Thank you so much!
You're welcome my friend.