ShLUbY's Garden

[ShLUbY]

Im not sure if I saw that or not. Recently I was at a local store and he showed me, what I thought was a sun system, hood/ballast/bulb fixture that had a weird vent for just over 500. I'll have to look into it! Also I love home made maple syrup. I was helping friends collect bags from the trees a couple weeks ago around here when it warmed up for a week! Great hobby and best tasting rewards!

yeah home made syrup is freakin amazing... store bought maple doesn't even compare... lacking in flavor for some reason, i mean it's still good, but just not like home made . I'm only running a couple taps this year because of my limited free time, but after i graduate i'll do 20+ when life slows down lol. When I start to look for some property in the coming year, maple tree will be a big purchasing point for me! I mean ideally i'd love to be able to pay a few mortgage payments or more a year with syrup profits... that'd be killer! I'll run as many taps as it takes lol

 

[elkamino]

did you see that hortilux is releasing CHPS? like $500 foe the ballast/bulb/hood fixture.... the CRI on them is ~82 or 85 or something... compared to ~25 from their normal SE bulbs... pretty friggin huge difference. I'll probably buy one of those and one HLG LED and do a side by side (at opposite ends of the room) to see which one I like better.

Gotta link? And do you know if they’ll require a square wave ballast or can they run in a std digital HPS fixture? I run some ok digital panels right now but have been missing the density I got with my 600 HPS...

 

[ShLUbY]

Gotta link? And do you know if they’ll require a square wave ballast or can they run in a std digital HPS fixture? I run some ok digital panels right now but have been missing the density I got with my 600 HPS...

from what i was told, you buy the whole fixture, you can't put the bulb in a standard digi ballast (you can but allegedly it doesn't operate the same way from what the rep said to the guy that runs the grow shop i go to). and for the record, he knows me and knows i don't buy into the bullshit of "extras" when it comes to growing lol... but he said he can't even buy just the bulb, it's the fixture/bulb combo for sale only.

https://eyehortilux.com/grow-lights/ceramic-hps/#1505844186134-54f962ad-8a4b

the site makes it sound like you can buy just the bulb.... so i'm interested to see how this is gonna unfold. I'm by no means an electrician, so i have no clue if the ballast makes a difference in the performance of these particular bulbs.

EDIT: one would have to be able to buy just the bulb though... how else would one replace an old one? lol... so yeah... need to email eye hort and ask what the deal is with the fixture. @elkamino

 

[ShLUbY]

Quick flower update:

Confidential Cheese @ 42 days in the 5 gal pumice SIPs (wish I would have done 7 gals....). Looking forward to seeing the swell on these last two weeks. The pumice SIPs are a smashing success... and I'm happy to say that all my plants that are not in no-tills are now in pumice SIPs. This has been fun




Brainwreck in 20 gal no-tills @ 28 days (really liking how these are looking... killer frost production already!)




Other happenings in the garden:

I transplanted my three phenos of Platinum Delights by Sin City Seeds. I'm flipping them when the confidential cheese is done in 2 weeks. They are in 5 gal pumice SIPs and are not going to be large plants by any means (hopefully lol) as I'm trying to figure out what pheno I want to keep out of the three (there are two plants of each pheno) and I'm running all six of them at once. But, as they are smaller, I probably won't topdress them and just let soil do what it does... produce the DANK. Also, in this pheno hunt, I have one of each pheno in a different soil mix. Both mixes are brand new: one is more diverse in terms of inputs, and the other is a slightly modified coots mix (+ greensand for sure, and I think biolive but can't remember off the top of my head...) with the NPK value amendments at 2/3cup per cubic foot of base and OSF at the regular 1/2cup per cubic foot. I posted one of the mixes a few weeks ago but I don't remember which one lol, I need to go back and look. So let's enjoy a little side by side soil mix along with this pheno hunt shall we? I'll get some pics and do a little analysis of my initial impressions of the different phenos in veg this coming weekend. Looking forward to this hunt, as I have never run a cookies strain before...

Will also get pics of the Pre-98 Bubba Kush this coming weekend (the ones I took over the weekend were not great). It's also in the more diverse, brand new mix in a 7 gal pumice SIP, and the onset of flowers at 14 days is looking and smelling amazing... can't believe how quick its coming along.

Thanks for stopping by; until next time.....

 

[Mohican]

Here is some Pre-98 Bubba from the 2015 season. I had to leave town for a while to help move my daughter home from the east coast so the didn't get much love.

Here are the Cherry Pie and Bubba cuts from the 2014 December BBQ:




May 19




May 27




June 5




July 6






July 10 (the short one)




Cheers,
Mo

 

[Mohican]

Bubba x Pakki Punch = Bucky



Cheers,
Mo

 

[ShLUbY]

Bubba x Pakki Punch = Bucky



Cheers,
Mo

look at that calyx structure in the one shot... interesting! Was it like... revegging or something, putting off those single leaves? Those seeds look awesome Mo!!!! Thanks for sharing and stopping by my dude . Hope you're not working too hard these days!

 

[Michael Huntherz]

Yo! Subbed.
Probably the only organic grow I follow. (Zealots...)
Much love, nice work, some amazing genes up in here. The plants, not you guys.

 

[ShLUbY]

Yo! Subbed.
Probably the only organic grow I follow. (Zealots...)
Much love, nice work, some amazing genes up in here. The plants, not you guys.

lol i'm a bit of a zealot myself... and I will admit that haha. But, seriously my dude, thank you for the kind words and I'm glad you are following a long! Things are gonna be getting real good here in the near future. Lots of new strains about to hit the garden this year, and some interesting revelations about the whole process that i'll be sharing my thoughts on. Cheers.

Updates coming today and tomorrow folks... stay tuned!

 

[Michael Huntherz]

lol i'm a bit of a zealot myself... and I will admit that haha. But, seriously my dude, thank you for the kind words and I'm glad you are following a long! Things are gonna be getting real good here in the near future. Lots of new strains about to hit the garden this year, and some interesting revelations about the whole process that i'll be sharing my thoughts on. Cheers.

Updates coming today and tomorrow folks... stay tuned!

Being passionate is good, you seem aight to me! Hopefully I won’t annoy the shit out of you, cheers back at ya.

 

[ShLUbY]

Pre98 Bubba Kush test plant 21 days in. In brand new mix of Peat/Coco, Pumice, EWC/Malibu's Compost, biolive, gypsum, alfalfa, neem, OSF, fishbone meal, kelp, greensand, crab meal, and rock dusts. Just topdressed this weekend with malibu's + bloom mix (3-7-4 + crumbled dried banana peels) and pumice for a little aeration. This is looking and smelling GREAT!







planning on letting her run up to 9 weeks.

 

[ShLUbY]

Though the soil had pH issues (which resolved aroun 6.9 pH... less than ideal but hey, live and learn), the Confidential Cheese have made it to the end. Here they are at 49 days, coming down this weekend around 54 days. These were the first flowering run of the pumice SIP experiment which worked really well all things considered.

 

[SoCal Calyx]

Just curious, what's your preferred pH Shlub?

Love the colors in those by the way. What were your night time temps in late flower?

One more quick question, doesn't look like you defoliate the fan leaves much/at all. My thoughts have been that it can be a good idea when trying to get more light to the lower/inner buds. Helping them to fill out and finish around the same time as the tops. What's your experience/opinion on this?

 

[ShLUbY]

Just curious, what's your preferred pH Shlub?

Love the colors in those by the way. What were your night time temps in late flower?

One more quick question, doesn't look like you defoliate the fan leaves much/at all. My thoughts have been that it can be a good idea when trying to get more light to the lower/inner buds. Helping them to fill out and finish around the same time as the tops. What's your experience/opinion on this?

i'd prefer to have the pH between around 6.3-6.5... solubility of everything is pretty on point at that range. The night temps are probably like 65ish... but that has little to do with the color. they're just out of food, at the end of their cycle, and the pH is inhibiting them because it's like 6.9ish.

i actually defoliated those confidential cheese plants pretty heavily around the 21 day mark... and one week later they looked not much different than they do now in terms of foliage amount. I definitely agree some defoliation is necessary, especially for air flow with a really leafy strain like this confidential cheese. but defo has to be done at the right times throughout the grow. if you go back about 4 or 5 pages you can see those plants at 21 days, and how they were defoliated, and then what they looked like a week later. this strain just grows the leaves lol. you should see the confidential cheese when it doesn't get a good defoliation... holy crap it's a mess! This was actually a pretty good run in terms of the amount of foliage I like... just not a good run in terms of soil pH (neither were the last few LOL). I'm working on it though. more to come on my thoughts on that another day. Have too much homework this week to get into those philosophies hahaha.

 

[ShLUbY]

Getting caught up on uploads still. So this is the most recent addition to the flower room. Brainwreck, around 21 days; three in 5 gal SIPs (front right and back two) and one in 7 gal (front left). I think the one in the 7 gal got a little overwatered because the 5 gal in the back left is absolutely crushing it haha. We'll see with the final weight though.

This is the last run I'll be putting through flower in the soil that just won't hold the pH right anymore. Which is fine, I'm glad I finally pinpointed why the yields were below average. I topdressed these with Down To Earth Acid Mix, about 1/3 cup each, a couple TBSP of gypsum each, fishbone meal, and dried crumbled banana peels. All that was mixed in a little compost, and covered with mulch. I'm hoping between the acid mix and the gypsum I can get the pH down a half a point or so. We'll see how that goes. I'll check the pH when I get back for the weekend. The plants look great (but i fear they will slow down per usual happenings with this mix but i gave them a good topdressing so we'll see), and were in the 6.8 6.9 range last I checked, so I'm hoping that it dropped over the course of the week.





I tried a new defoliation trick too with this batch. I don't remember where I saw it... but rather than removing the whole leaf by the petiole, i snipped off about 3/4 of the blade itself, and left the petiole attached. Those little veins are much easier for the plant to heal than snapping off the petiole, and trimming the blades still lets a lot of light into the canopy. I'm gonna do some more trimming this weekend. it doesn't look Like i did much, but there was a lot more light penetrating through afterwards. Lollipopped the shit outta them too... i still see a couple more little branches I can take off.

That's all from last weekend. Catch you for the new updates in a few days.

 

[ShLUbY]

Hope everyone had a good 420! Here's some of the TGA Dairy Queen after getting a nice cure...

 

[SoCal Calyx]

i'd prefer to have the pH between around 6.3-6.5... solubility of everything is pretty on point at that range. The night temps are probably like 65ish... but that has little to do with the color. they're just out of food, at the end of their cycle, and the pH is inhibiting them because it's like 6.9ish.

i actually defoliated those confidential cheese plants pretty heavily around the 21 day mark... and one week later they looked not much different than they do now in terms of foliage amount. I definitely agree some defoliation is necessary, especially for air flow with a really leafy strain like this confidential cheese. but defo has to be done at the right times throughout the grow. if you go back about 4 or 5 pages you can see those plants at 21 days, and how they were defoliated, and then what they looked like a week later. this strain just grows the leaves lol. you should see the confidential cheese when it doesn't get a good defoliation... holy crap it's a mess! This was actually a pretty good run in terms of the amount of foliage I like... just not a good run in terms of soil pH (neither were the last few LOL). I'm working on it though. more to come on my thoughts on that another day. Have too much homework this week to get into those philosophies hahaha.

Thanks for the response Shlubs. I think we have the same pH meter...the Bluelab soil tester model? I'm about six weeks into my first organic grow (many rounds in hydro prior) and I'd like to improve my soil pH'ing skills. I'm having some trouble getting what I would consider consistent/trustworthy pH readings.

When's the best time to take a reading? Immediately after watering, a bit longer after? Do you use the same soil hole each time, or do you sample around the container? I'm currently vegging in 2 gallon containers and I've been hesitant to shove that spike down into my root zone to make a new sample hole when want to take a new reading. Probably not such a big deal with 5 gallon or even larger containers I imagine. Have you noticed pH fluctuate much when sampling at different points in a container?

I've also noticed that readings will tend to be affected by the pH of the water I've rinsed the probe off with. Do you rinse, then dry the probe off between each reading? I've been doing that recently and it seems I'm getting more reliable readings, but I'm worried that touching the probe tip when drying isn't a good idea (they really stress the importance of that damn tip on this meter). But it just seems that if I leave 8.5 pH tap water on the probe tip (after rinsing), it mixes with the soil moisture when it hits the bottom of the hole and leads to a contaminated sample. Rinsing with lower pH water has resulted in lower pH readings, that's what leads me to believe there's something going on here.

Any thoughts?

 

[ShLUbY]

Yeah I have noticed those same things as well. And yes I test multiple holes in each container and there is some slight differences between testing sites, but usually not more than +/-.1. Just using a paper towel to damp off the excess moisture works alright.

As for when to test, I like to do it a could hours after I water. Soil is still moist but not over saturated or anything. And sometimes you gotta just check the day of watering and the day after (or two when it’s getting more dry), just to see what kind of fluctuations may be happening. Neat little tool.

 

[SoCal Calyx]

Thanks dude, appreciate your thoughts.

 

[ShLUbY]

First round of pumice SIPs done! Confidential Cheese @ 55 days. What a beauty of a fade!