Maverick’s Timber 4vs Grow Journal

Seed Sprouting experiment Round 2 Day 9 update:

Seedlings are all looking happy and healthy. Gave them some water yesterday as I could see that the soil was staring to dry out a bit. Also have been slowly opening the vents in the dome to start to harden them off.

Seed Sprouting experiment Round 2 Day 11 update:

Started seeing a little deformation on a couple of the leaves today, which IME is the result of too low of RH (or at least too rapid of a change), so gave the ones that looked like their soil was a little drier some more water and left the vents in the dome the same to hopefully let them adjust.

The Top watering also seems to be doing the trick in keeping the roots mainly in the soil as there don’t appear to be as many or as long of roots growing out the bottoms as last time (despite the seedlings looking a little bigger at this time than they were last round). Fingers crossed this results in more solid root balls.

Seed Sprouting experiment Round 2 Day 14 update:

Seedlings still looking happy and healthy (other than a single leaf on one of the Soak to Soil group) so I decided to remove the dome completely today.

Expecting that a bunch more may want some water when I check them tomorrow, but at this point they haven’t been drying out super quickly, so don’t expect them to get over-dried out either.

Interestingly enough, it appears that the Paper Towel group is the furthest along of all the groups at this point, so it’s gonna be fun to see if there is any notable difference in terms of development or root development when I eventually pop a couple of each into some Solo Cups at the end of this round.

Seed Sprouting experiment Round 2 Day 17 update:

Seedlings were all looking pretty happy today, though it’s been a little colder the past few days, so they aren’t “praying” as much as they were last round when it was still warmer outside.

Soil was definitely starting to dry out on a bunch of them as well (though nothing bad like a few days ago) so I gave them all at least some water after I snapped these pics/video.

Also checked the roots under the cells and it looks like they have mostly air pruned, thanks to watering from the top rather than from the bottom, which hopefully means that the roots have chosen to stay up in the soil and that this will result in more solid rootballs.

Seed Sprouting experiment Round 2 Day 20 update:

Seedlings were all looking happy today and the 2 that had dried out a bit too much yesterday and started to droop were back up and growing well. Bunch of leaves praying as well.

Definitely a little bit behind last round at this time in terms of development, which I think is due to my having removed the dome earlier this time around.

Thinking this round is gonna go the full 4 weeks till these girls would be ready to transplant and I think I’m gonna try putting them into the bed this time rather than into Solo Cups as that’s what I’m gonna do with the Skunk seedlings, so I wanna know what they’re gonna do.

Seed Sprouting experiment Round 2 Day 28 update:

Today is the official final day of this experiment, but, it looks like almost half the cells didn’t wind up drying out as much as I would have preferred, so I chose to pot up the ones that did and leave the rest to dry out more. Hopefully should be ready by tomorrow or maybe Wednesday at the latest.

Found 4 people interested in taking the seedlings off my hands, but still may wind up having to mulch a few as one person who was originally going to take 12+ wound up only having room for 8.

Still, happy that most of them will have a chance to grow and potentially be great.

The seedlings in the bed continue to look better every day and I have decided to leave them in there to grow and get the SFW cranking while the Skunk seedlings sprout and grow. If they get too big before the skunk seeds are ready I will obviously chop and drop them as mulch.

Based on the results of this and the previous experiment, I’ll be soaking the Skunk seeds in water for 24 hours, followed by planting them into a pre moistened mix of 50% M3 and 50% compost. Will probably start soaking them Thursday morning and plant them Friday morning by the looks of this week. Can’t wait!

Thanks for following along, hope someone else found my little experiment helpful.

Oh yeah boys n girls! Today is the day! Popped these Original Skunk1 seeds into a cup of water to soak. Tomorrow they will go into a 50/50 mix of M3 and Compost. Hoping for 12 out of 12.

Once they are big enough I’m gonna plant all 12 of them into the bed. It’s gonna be pretty cramped, but hoping I at least have enough time to Top each one and put all the Tops into Flower so I can both sex all of the plants and also get some sort of idea about their Terp profiles.

Then I’ll keep the 3 best females and the best male, mulch the rest (both males and females) and will make some more seeds so I can keep growing out . That should also allow me to gauge how the females do in regards to final Flower/branch structure and resistance to fungal pathogens. Then I’ll take the clones from the winning female and do a full run of her using the 4 strongest clones (taken right before I Flip them) next time.

Wish me luck.

P.S. got all the seedlings potted up and ready to go to good homes (my best buddy already took 2 off my hands), 12 of which are in the other tent under the Mars Hydro and 9 more still in this tent till their new owner(s) comes to collect them.

MSL Cover also continuing to come in.

Well, shit, I paid some stupid tax today. Was so excited to get these Skunk seeds into soil that I tried to cram and get them planted while being crunched for time and dropped 3 of them while dumping them out of the cup.

Think I found 2 of them, but hard to be sure as they fell into my bucket of soil (and I had already dumped out the cup of water and didn’t have time to go grab another cup). Planted what I found regardless. So will have to wait and see.

On the upside I have 9 for sure that are now in soil and should hopefully sprout in about 3 days. In actuality 9 plants fit into my bed better than 12, so, assuming they all pop that may even work out better. Gotta look on the bright side!

Ultimately 8 out of the 9 seeds that I am certain I planted sprouted. Unfortunately, the soil dried out way faster this time than the last time and 2 of them dried out. Then one of them didn’t kick it’s seed shell in time and got fucked up because of it.

So, looks like I’ll have 5 plants that are gonna go in the bed. Hoping for a keeper female and a keeper male to make seeds, but, in the event that I don’t I’ll probably just make 4 clones of the best female and do a full run with her next time.

Hoping that I at least get one truly Skunky Terpene profile female out of the bunch. But, if not I’ll probably get another pack and make sure I make the necessary adjustments next time.

Sadly, 2 more of the seedlings wound up dying due to the medium drying out too quickly on me and a 3rd one didn’t manage to kick the seed shell fast enough and so doesn’t look like it’ll make it either.

So, that leaves 5 nice strong seedlings that will eventually go into the bed.

Hoping to find at least one Skunky Terpene profile female in the bunch, hopefully a good yielder that also is nice and frosty.

Wound also like to find a nice male, and if I do to breed them so I can have Skunk seeds to grow and Pheno hunt three for years to come.

Anything beyond that will be gravy.

Also decided to try one more experiment before I get these seedlings into the bed and get serious, so I soaked 6 more “stress seeds” in water overnight and planted 3 straight into the bed and put another 3 into Paper Towel to germinate.

I figure that, if they sprout and do well, that planting straight into the bed would be even simpler and less laborious than using the seed tray and dome. So I may just do that going forwards.

Planted all 6 seeds into the bed. All 3 of the seeds in the paper towel were allowed to grow out their tails prior to planting.

So far, 2 have come up.

Skunk seedlings are doing well and the bed is really starting to pick up steam.

Day 19 update:

Decided to Top the plants in the bed after all as they were starting to grow into the seedlings in the tray.

Kept a Cut of each one and put them into a solo cup of water to soak (not pictured). Will offer them to my buddy, but if he doesn’t want them I’ll probably just mulch them back into the bed.

Also had to water 3 of the 5 seedlings in the tray, which is a good thing because it means they are drinking through their water well.

Well, how does the saying go? “Life is what happens while you are busy making plans” or something along those lines.

Turns out that the seedlings were even hungrier than I had realized because today when I checked on them at least one of them was showing some spotting on its leaves (likely either Potassium or Manganese deficiency).

So, decided that today was the day that they got transplanted into their forever home and planted them into the bed.

Attempted to space them out so as to divide the bed into 5 fairly even sized spaces and placed them based on how deficient they were looking compared to how vigorously the plants already in those areas are looking.

Also decided to leave the plants in the bed for now to help with some dry back (soil was at 60 mBar today when I checked, after having watered it for the MSL Cover yesterday and having it drop down to around 35 mBar) and to keep the exudates going. But, I pruned them back to allow the seedlings to get “full sun”.

Once the seedlings have established themselves I’ll completely chop and mulch the big plants (or, I suppose I could take cuttings from them and try to grow them out, but probably not gonna as I want the space to be able to sex and grow out the Skunk Tops that I’ll be taking once they are big enough).

The rootballs were definitely intact enough, even though the soil was still quite wet from having watered them yesterday, to allow for easy removal from the tray and transplanting, so that’s good.

Absolutely psyched to finally have these plants in the bed and to watch them take off and see what I’ve got!

Day 5 in the Living Soil bed and the Skunk seedlings are showing signs of bouncing back. Definitely growing and starting to see them greening back up.

Meanwhile the soil continues its dry back. My Blumat moisture meter read 89 today (up from 80 yesterday and about 45 Monday when I first put them into the bed), so gonna start brewing a Compost Tea today which will be ready Sunday morning (roughly 36 hours brew time).

Speaking of which, I harvested a good 50+ lbs of Worm Castings/Compost/IMO from my outdoor Compost pile today, which is what I’m using to make my Tea and also plan on using to Top Dress with when I chop and drop the Cover.

To quote one of my favorite Chapelle Show skits, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Hit the target mBar reading on the nose and so gave the plants and whole bed 4 gallons of AACT made from Compost harvested from one of my outdoor Compost Piles.

Also decided to leave the big plants in the bed, but heavily pruned them back to both allow the Skunk seedlings to get “full sun” and also so I could recycle some of the nutrients within the bigger plants back into the soil so the Skunk seedlings can use them to grow.

This should kick the bed’s Soil Food Web into high gear which will help break down not only the mulched leaves but also the dry amendments already in the soil and I’m hoping that when I open the tank tomorrow to check on them that I’ll find some happy plants.

Been roughly 3 days since I have the plants their AACT and pruned back the big Skunk x Prayer Pupil seedlings and the Original Skunk seedlings are looking better every day.

I also decided to turn up the Timber a bit, not only because I was still seeing a little more stretch than I’d like, but also to see if I can get the plants to drink through their water a little faster than they have been.

If they still look good tomorrow, then I’ll turn it up again and see how they respond. I’d like to get it up to about 280 Watts (currently at 150) within the next 2-3 weeks as that is roughly 2/3 power and that will allow me to keep the DLI the same when I Flip them to Flower and crank it to max power.

Blumat moisture meter was reading 90 today, so decided to chop the big girls in the bed. Kept at least one cutting from each plant, so I can choose to Flower them out if I want to, or even just see if I can keep them alive till next outdoor season.

Hopefully now, that they’ll are all getting “full sun” and they can use the nutrients that were in the cellular structures of the big plants, the Original Skunk seedlings will really start to take off.

The Original Skunk seedlings continue to thrive. Even the one in the middle, which was having the hardest time bouncing back, was praying to the sun gods today!

Moisture levels are also spot on!

Thinking that within the next week I am gonna see them really start to take off.

Oh yeah, off to the races now! Seedlings are really starting to take off now.

3 of the 5 seedlings are also starting to develop preflowers, so we shall see what those indicate. Plus I still plan on Topping these all and Sexing the Cuts that I take in the process so I know for sure what I’ve got and what types of characteristics the parent plants have so I can pick the best male and breed him to the females.

Merry Christmas everyone!

So far I have one confirmed female plant and early indications suggest that I may even wind up with all 5 being female, but still too early to say for certain.

MSL Cover is growing like crazy as well and I continue to have to prune it back almost daily as the big leaves grow into the Cannabis plants.