Perpetual Short Bus: A Crop Circle Story

[Saladman AKA Mixed Greens]

Thanks for the input Doc, much appreciated!

I agree with all of your points, and I consider it all great advice for anyone interested in gardening. There are a couple people who have shown me evidence that in a tightly packed indoor space with all the variables accounted for and stabilized (temp., humidity, ventilation, nutes, etc.) defoliation accounted for larger than normal yields.

I know it goes against all of the traditional MJ forum wisdom, but I've heard of heavy pruning being beneficial to other crops (tomatos & grapes specifically) and the evidence from some growers I've seen has been somewhat convincing, so I'm still on the fence. I think it only works indoors, in tight spaces, with certain strains, when pruned at the proper times, so it's still a crap shoot. Man o man, so much to learn still!

 

[Dr. Nuggett]

A bit. Dr. Greenthumb's wants a car payment for his seeds. 10 for $225.00 and feminized. I'm not much of a fan of feminized seeds. But to each his own and I wish you all the luck with them.

 

[Short Bus]

Yeah, I'm with you on the fem seeds thing, I greatly prefer to pop regular seeds and get a natural female. Besides, what if I wanted to make more seeds? As far as Endless Sky goes, I think $225 is, well, excessive, but worth it for a high yield strain that finishes in 6 weeks.

 

[lbezphil2005]

About the thumb - aww, thats not that bad. I do shit like that on a weekly basis (maybe thats why I'm disabled now!!! (LMAO!!!) Those you can live with, most of the time not too much blood just hurts like hell!!

 

[Short Bus]

Yup, not too bad, just gross looking. I'm working on a degree in kinesiology, and there's a lot of medical crossover, so I've learned to enjoy gross looking. After a couple semesters in the anatomy lab (1 as a student, 1 as a TA) you start thinking shit like that is cool. I actually finished sinking the screw and took pics before I showed the wife. After enough time around tools you start being madder about the long-term inconvenience of shit like that than the pain of the initial injury. The worst part was trimming a plant that night. The secret? A thick gauze pad and lots of tape.

 

[Dr. Nuggett]

Yup, not too bad, just gross looking. I'm working on a degree in kinesiology, and there's a lot of medical crossover, so I've learned to enjoy gross looking. After a couple semesters in the anatomy lab (1 as a student, 1 as a TA) you start thinking shit like that is cool. I actually finished sinking the screw and took pics before I showed the wife. After enough time around tools you start being madder about the long-term inconvenience of shit like that than the pain of the initial injury. The worst part was trimming a plant that night. The secret? A thick gauze pad and lots of tape.

Are you studying that for robotics or for actual human animal movement.

 

[Short Bus]

Human movement, with a focus on health, fitness, and exercise-based physical rehab/injury prevention. Robots are dope, got one in my grow room, but beyond what I want to try and comprehend or work with.

 

[Short Bus]

Got my CMH bulb this morning and fired it up, th thing looks gorgeous and it makes my plants look good too. I'll be watching closely over the next week to observe the difference in growth. New pics from the garden later.

 

[Short Bus]

So yeah, bulb's in and running and it looks great. Noisy thing, but it does what it's supposed to and that's all I care about. Plus it makes for way better pics.

Here's a look at my first DWC plants, both of which look awesome so far. I think a few eye hooks around the lid would make crop circle training doable with DC buckets, although I don't know about tomato cages. Maybe PVC cages around the buckets... Anyway, here's some root porn.

The 2 plants are only a couple days apart in age, so you can literally see how fast they're growing at this point. Can't wait to see what the CMH bulb does to the growth rate. Here's the finished staging tower, grossly overpopulated at the moment. I was hoping to sell some young plants to the local clubs but the competition is stiff around here. Not really sure what to do with em, but several dozen teenage plants is a bitch to deal with when you only need about 10 of em. Any suggestions?

And a look at a flowering OG, one of the last, that I pulled out for watering today.

 

[Saladman AKA Mixed Greens]

Lookin' good B,

The DWC's seem to be working well, very nice rootage. How tall is that OG, and are you expecting any yield increase? Also, how's that Sour Grape coming along, still lagging?

 

[Short Bus]

Defoliation with a moving light was just dumb on my part. I have 2 generations of defoliated plants, I'm harvesting 1 generation over this week, and I'm averaging about 1/2 to 1 ounce per plant. Freaking out over here. That'll learn me tho, right? "Consider all factors" is the name of the game here. I'll post pics of the flower room later so you can see what they're doing. I think the key to using that technique is constant intense light. The guy running that thread had a designated light over each plant if I remember right. I'm expecting to do better once I get through the next couple weeks of sub-par harvesting.

 

[Saladman AKA Mixed Greens]

Ouch!

Sorry to hear that brother. Thanks for putting in the effort though, it sucks learning the hard way, but as long as we're learning...

Psyched to see how the flower room is coming along, too.

How's the finger looking by the way? That Super Glue do you right?

 

[Short Bus]

Thanks, Saladninja. I do everything the hard way, tho, so I'm used to it. I'll be back in biz in 2 weeks, no big deal.

Here's a look at my flower room, looking almost full finally. This is the left side of the room.

And the right.

Here's a "Fan's eye view."

And here's that deleafed Sour Grape, looking sparse at 37 days of flower. I guess if it's a week behind it's normal flowering schedule, as is claimed by many defoliation enthusiasts, then it would be about normal. We'll see, it's definitely not getting another haircut like that.

And here's a Super Skunk that should be done by now, looking to have about 1/4 the weight I usually see. Sigh... Ladies and gents, here's some serious evidence on the deleafing debate. Bit me right in the ass, when done to excess. I still think thinning here and there for airflow and light penetration can be effective, as that's been my experience.

That's about it for the flower room.

 

[Short Bus]

I wanted to lay out my veg system in a clear, visual way, in case anyone else wants to try my "ramping up" method of root development. Here's the first stage, 10 oz root pruning cups. Inside cup is full of holes, outside cup has bottom drainage but mostly serves to create a humidity zone to draw out the roots, just like a humdome for cloning. When the outside air holds as much or more water than the medium, that's where the roots go. Matter of fact, here's a pic of 1 day's root growth inside a cover container, then the stage 1 plants.

You can probably tell it's kind of overpopulated right now, like I was saying earlier. Still not sure what to do with all those, I hate to just throw em out but that's a bug problem waiting to happen. Here's stage 2, 16 oz cups, same set-up, plus some overflow from upstairs.

Here's the 3rd stage, 32 oz root pruning containers, the last step before they go into buckets and move from the shelves to the big veg room. By "big" I mean 3x3. These are recent transplants, not very big yet for this stage.

I'm pretty sure I could do away with 1 of the 2 party cups stages, the party cups are mostly just a way to keep rooted younglings around without leaving em in the clone tray. Once I get through the overage of young plants I'll probably go back to 16 oz and 32 oz stages only, and just keep a dozen or so of the 16 ozers. As long as your plants spend about 3 weeks in each container size, they'll have time to condense their rootball through the pruning process, which will make for much faster growth in eah stage that follows, including flower.

Finally, my girls land in root pruning buckets and spend about 3 weeks (24 days) getting their legs under them and being trained for flower. Does anyone else see new growth since the CMH bulb went in? I swear I did today, but I get to look closer than everyone here.

Tha's my veg system. Veg is the stage where you can really influence your plants, once they're in flower it's more about providing for them and not interfering (by shaving them bald) but in veg you can train your plant to thrive in the conditions you plan to provide it with when it flowers.

 

[verysneaky]

I had a friend over the other day and we got to talking about the root pruning buckets and the fact that the home depot ones will let light into the bucket from the side and that effects growth. You ever heard anything like that? I would assume that the weedblock definitely constricts the light but I can see his point.

 

[rasputin71]

I had a friend over the other day and we got to talking about the root pruning buckets and the fact that the home depot ones will let light into the bucket from the side and that effects growth. You ever heard anything like that? I would assume that the weedblock definitely constricts the light but I can see his point.

How much light gets thru the top layer of soil where there is no orange bucket surface? Air (and light) will only affect the roots that can see/feel it which is at the very edge. Once the roots hit that air (or light) barrier they will die off and cause the root to branch out back inside the pot, where there is no light. I dont use any cover buckets on my diy air-pruning pots and I get root tips crawling out, even from the little 3/8" holes, behind 2 layers of burlap mesh, in my very first 7qt version. I use much bigger holes now (2") and bigger pots/pails.

I really like the smart pots (using #1's for seedlings/veg now) but it is a lot easier to move a pail around. I want to try some of the actual 'air-pots'.

 

[Short Bus]

Yeah, I think the light issue is more for hydro, light isn't gonna get far when dirt's in the way.

 

[verysneaky]

good to know, i put together about 6 buckets the other day for some moms, just to try them out, Kept pictures so when i start my build

 

[Short Bus]

Nice, let me know if you start a journal.

 

[Saladman AKA Mixed Greens]

Bus,

How big would you say your biggest single colas have gotten using CCOB? Would you say the size of a Bic lighter, or a cell phone or a soda can? Consequently, how much would you say your largest single colas have weighed?