Perpetual Short Bus: A Crop Circle Story

The Jungle is massive!

Your cat is thingking "new litter boxes, thanks"

lol.

Ladies are looking good man.

Changed the water yesterday and had the missus take a few pics of the swimmin girls. They're at day 18 of flower here.

Peekaboo motherfuckers!









Funny thing, the one with more roots is the smaller plant. We'll see how that plays out by harvest. Super Skunk harvests around day 49-55 for me, so about a month left.

too bad your beautiful plants cant cover more of that 4head, baldy, lol.

plants do look gr8!!

I know, right? The worst part is I'm not balding, I just have a giant fucking five-head.

lol , so does my best bud but he is a ginger so it looks even funnier.

Man, I've been lagging on updating this thing. Pics tonight, plus an update in the harvest journal. Saladman, if you're still around this harvest is gonna include the stripped Sour Grape you wanted to follow. It actually did well, compared to some.

Been swamped lately, life kicking my ass and all that good shit. I just updated my harvest journal, feel free to check it out. The new post has the last of my stripped down plants at harvest, did ok but not great. I also figured I'd show everybody what's waiting in the wings. These are 2 of my last OG Kush plants, got 1 more in there after these and then I'll be shut of the stuff. A quick note for any other OG Kush growers out there: We talked to the dispensary where we picked up our mom plant last summer, and they told us that with OGK, particularly the sativa-dom SFV cut we had, a very small ammount of stress can completely alter the way the plant flowers. So the small mite outbreak or occasional minor burn will turn these from candy plants to rangy, larfy, jungle mutts. So there's that, in case anyone else had that problem. Me, I'm still on my first grow, I want it easy! Nothing high maintenance will ever last in my life, ask my exes. Here's the OGs.

Thing 1















Thing 2

















Kinda loose, leafy bud development, but I've seen worse. These are also throwing 1 or 2 sets of boy parts every couple days, making for a work intensive last couple weeks, but it should be worth the effort to let em get as ripe as they can. Lot's of colas on these girls, that's the important thing.

Man you got a hell of a mite outbreak over there!

Looking ok though! I have a big ole OGK mom right now but im scared to try running any of it, seems like it might just not weigh out and that wouldnt be good.

Yeah, they got bad for a while there. Little bastards. All dead now, thanks to Hot Shot strips.

As far as OG goes, if you have a good, bug-free setup you'll be fine. It's just kind of a tempermental strain. I never knew what people meant by that before, but I'm real clear now. My first run of the stuff was super dank, but that was it. Running 1 or 2 can't hurt, good way to grade your gardening.

Edit: I guess my grade can't be that good...

theres a few ways to get rid of the little bastards, I used the stuff in this post: https://www.rollitup.org/marijuana-plant-problems/96822-kill-your-spidermites-today.html

It was the first mentioned spray, vinegar, baking soda, soap, lemon, it worked great but burnt the plants up a bit.

Also have used avid in the past, but sometimes thats hard to get rid of.

You basically need to empty your room and bleach the shit out of everything .... im talking hoods, buckets, floor, ceiling, everything. I did that for 2 harvs in a row and basically i think i might make it through without seeing one.

Normally its scorched earth when i see those little fucks, Ill toss out whole trays of babies and bleach everything if i see even one.

Yeah, I hear you. I didn't get how much damage they could do when I first got em, and after I figured it out I burnt a whole generation of plants with this petroleum-based crap, pretty much wiped em out. I think 2 of those 18 plants made it into flower. As sprays go, I've had the best luck with tobacco tea supplemented with a little soap and neem oil. The Hot Shot strips are awesome. I timed my fans to shut off every night for a few hours, so far all I see is dead mites. I see a new hatchling once in a while on flowering plants, but veg is clean at this point, big green unmunched foliage everywhere. The hardest part for me was killing them around a perpetual set-up. Just not an option to shut down shop and wait 3 months to start harvesting again, not for me. I've thrown gallons of spray at the plants, and gallons of bleach at the rooms and equipment, but every time I slipped and stopped paying attention my leaves started looking munched on again. The pest strips are awesome, light but constant airborne bug death. I'm gonna check that link tho, thanks man. I hear baking soda spray works on powdery mildew.

I just get eagle 20 for powdery mildew, but again another hard thing to get if youre in cali cause its illegal like avid cause it harms some kind of stupid environment shit.

I can get my hands on both if you need any, seems youre close enough to come get it from me im east bay.

Thanks homes, I might have to take you up on that. It'd be good to meet someone from the forums in person, too.

let me know if you need it

Thanks again VS, much appreciated, but I think I'm good for now. I'd make the trip just to have the stuff on hand, and meet ya in person, but I have some local obligations for the next 5 weeks or so that make traveling even short distances pretty much out. Truth told, the wifey's in the late stages of our first pregnancy and I gotta be around for various reasons to help her out. Still, in the near future we'll have to meet up and try each other's wares.

All the talk about mites made me realize that I haven't posted pics of undamaged plants in a while. I thought maybe folks' enjoy seeing a little more of the 2 DWC plants I'm running as a learning experience. Those are the oldest plants I have that aren't chewed up by 2 spotted cocksucker bugs. That's a scientific term, by the way. Anyway, here's some clean green foliage.

Edit: Now with pics. Duh...











That's a little more like it. It'll be a month or so before I've harvested all the plants with mite damage, so bear (bare?) with me on the chewed up leaves in pics.

ahhh love the roots man and some of those nugs are prety damn frosty for there age

Thanks man, that's the biggest bunch of roots I've had yet. Beginner's luck for this kid.

Made some new dirt this week. I've been running Subcool's super soil for a while and although I think it's an awesome recipe/approach, the method of 2 layers of soil at different strengths didn't work so well for my system. When I finally drop plants into their buckets after all that root pruning, they take off and grow ike mad. That means they have a very big appetite immediately and can develop nutrient deficiencies waiting for their roots to get deep enough into the super soil layer. For anyone who doesn't know, Sub's super soil is a recipe for highly concentrated organic medium, which is used in the bottom half of a large-ish container, with regular potting soil on top. Small plants started in the top layer of normal soil get big enough to handle the concentrate by the time their roots hit it, and they take off and need nothing but water for the rest of the grow. It's great if your plant starts in that container, but the method needed a tweak for me. Basically what I'm doing is mixing all the dry ingredients (blood and fish meals, bat shit, azomite, granular humic acid, lime) in a bucket and adding them at half strength to a tub of peat, perlite, vermiculite, worm shit, cow shit (couldn't get horse), plus kelp and alfalfa meals and more granular humic. I've got a brand new clone in it right now to see how it reacts, if it lives I'm good to go. I want to use a nute-free medium for the first couple steps so I can fine-tune in the beginning, and then drop in buckets and not worry about it till I pull em.

So I finally got a working 400w CMH bulb yesterday, looks great. Can't wait to see this in action. I think I might want to alter my training schedule to have longer mainstems and shorter, more numerous colas to make up for the low light penetration of a 400 watt bulb.

Oh yeah, and I also include a couple scoops of diatomaceous earth in my soil to kill bugs and larvae. Handy stuff.

Update time... things are good in the garden, making some changes tho. Crop circles are on the way out. I feel like in another 6 months of trial and error I could perfect the sysytem, but I'm having a kid next week and I need this op to start running itself. I'm converting my garden to a DWC SOG op, and I'll probly start a new thread once I get there as it will no longer be a crop circle story. Hobbes, if you're still out there, your system works wonders, but it's a steep learning curve compared to others and there's a tendency for a lot of loose, under-developed buds. I'm still totally willing to answer any questions anyone has about crop circling, and I still say it's the best soil technique for large yield in limited space. Anyway, I'm gonna keep this journal until I'm fully switched over, so anyone interested can watch the conversion.

In other news, Hot Shot Strips work great, but I'm starting to see occasional live mites again. I'm in an agricultural area of central CA, we have the Pacific 2-spotted mite (on paper as the toughest to get rid of), these 2 factors add up to a nearly indestructible species with an insane tolerance of toxins. So I'm over the dumb shit, hit ebay for an ounce of floramite a few days back and got the ship notification today. Scorched fucking Earth coming soon. VS, if I could travel I'd come see you for the Avid, but I'm stuck near the hospital for a bit, til my little man comes thru.

I also put in my first seed-bank order, picked up a pack of Mandala Seeds' Satori, a sativa known for giant top colas and a psychedelic high. Mostly I got it because it was inexpensive, looked to yield well, and was bred thru pretty legitimate botanical methods. Anyway, it shipped out of the Attitude a few days ago, so hopefully I'll have em soon.

That's what's going on here these days. Oh, and I just moved the buckets of Purple Caddy and N. Lights into flower about 4 days back. I'll try to get some pics soon.