Naughty.Psychonaut

Too true, brother. Before I had a real setup and still played around with household items trying to slap a DIY setup together, I grabbed a safeway desk fan from clicks. probably cheapest one out there. This was probably around 2016 to 2017. It still works today. I ran it for about 2 or 3 months non stop at the beginning, but when I bought a setup I grabbed a combo from futurama and got the fan in question as part of the combo, so I replaced the El-cheapo, but she's sitting in her box ready to go if I need a extra little fan for whatever. 

I have a friend that went through this recently, arguing with me about his fan being up to shit and is starting to give in now only after one grow, but when I visit him and tell him that he needs to look after his shit, because there is a visible layer of dust building up on the fan and is probably an easy fix then he goes off saying "but I pay for the thing and it should work right all the time" then I just stop trying to help the dude. 

It's a matter of "as jy nie wil hoor nie moet jy maar voel" but in a financial way

Welcome! 

great place to be if you wana grow some dank! 

Loving the layout of the garden there!  

My dudes 

Two or three months of use is really not the normal amount of time for those clip grip fans though, I have 3 going for a year. 1 probably going for 2 years now. 

After I complete a grow clean my fans properly, last grow I finished was the first time I did a deep clean and ended up opening all of them to get to the dust, it's really really easy to open them up. Take the front off, put your fingers behind the base of the blades around the king pin and push away from the rest of the fan so the blades pop off the pin, take the front screws out then the 2 on the back and there you go, it's open! 

Look inside the little motor? They're super simple to understand. It's got 3 wires. Positive, negative and a 3rd wire that goes to the speed control. You'll see where they all go, see if they all attached? If not it will take a drop of solder to reattach. See if the little motor isn't just dirty? Can the pin move around freely? Get dust out everywhere you can and put a drop of oil on the pin as it comes out the motor, spin it around a few times and all that. If it still doesn't work.... it's probably fucked

That is quite a mix! How long do you let all that sit before planting in it? 

another interesting titbit I found during all the testing and shit,

I got a Sour Lemon OG from the Emerald Triangle that's a sativa dominant then I have the Banana Hammock, a heavy indica. Two very different plants.

Just doing some check ups and testing to see what's what, and I found the EC in the two mediums where quite different. What threw me off first was that all plants seemed fine. SL had hiiiigh EC around 8 - 9. BH had a normal EC 5-6. 

I quickly realised I really shouldn't care what people say, because I was given 100 different reason as to why that would happen and that I just needed to practice discipline by not messing up when giving nutrients and be more sure of what I am doing and and and.....

Skip a few weeks, after giving different nutes and trying to get the EC of all the mediums the same, what do I find? A lovely toasted Sour Lemon OG plant, fucked. Because I listened to people instead of the plant. 

I never messed up in the first place, the reason for the EC difference was cause the SL doesn't want any feed and the BH wants more. Even something as simple as the genetics of a plant will have impact on the EC in your medium.

Well, before getting into this I have to ask, have you ever experienced "hot soil" or heard of anyone planting into organic soil only to have their plant curl up and turn to toast? 

You see, I don't really like the whole "no need for testing because it's organic" that a lot of people throw around these days. 

If the saying was true at all then why would organic soil end up toasting a plant? The fact is that organic soil can and surely will become too "hot" and you can definitly experience nutrient build up in organic soil just as you do with synthetic nutes and coco and there are ways to go about fixing that. I've seen oaks throw away whole plants because they repot into some "fancy" soil then they don't do any tests and call it a loss and call out the brand that makes the soil. I was almost that guy...

In my thread "back at it like a crack addict" you can see that there is without a doubt such a thing as "too much" when it comes to EC in organics. With a simple quick runoff test I saw that my EC was higher than 9.9... flushed with clean water (just like in coco/hydro) got the medium EC down to 3-4, plants exploded with growth. finished with the biggest harvest I done to date. 

after some seasoned growers where stumped and couldn't really provide me with much help because they "didn't believe in testing organics" and I almost lost a whole crop if I listened to them. 

Ph is a whole different ball game. Not all organic soils have the same buffering capabilities or work only in certain range and what not. I think the biggest impact is actually the difference in pot growing and earth growing. When growing straight in the earth I wouldn't ever mind checking ph, but when it comes to growing in a pot, especially when recycling soil that contains coco which starts breaking down and releasing magnesium over time and as you know magnesium swings can cause PH swings and also a pot with soil in has a defined microbiome, if you keep giving water with ph that is way out eventually you'll end up changing the micro activity in the soil and soon to follow will be the ph and then plants will not uptake as they should and this is when your EC starts to climb. 

with all this said, you can 100% even have plants growing straight in the earth that experience nutrient lockout because of root damage caused by either ph swings or simply a root that hits a mineral pocket. 

one cannot dictate how nature should behave so promoting no tests on organic is such a loose end argument, not that I am saying this is what you're promoting. I just don't see why a seasoned grower will tell a new grower to not do test, when testing will just help the newbie to understand and read the soil and plant better.

I say test everything even the things you think you are sure of

☝ the soil we're talking about here is the load in the big pot above, in the post where I mention the Trainwreck and Hawaiian Cake plants I speak of another test I am doing with some re-ammended soil. I had a bag of sphagnum, mixed into the same recycled FF + wormcasting mix and it came out really nice but I felt it needed some perlite and now I am happy with the mix. 

that mix will only be used for potting up cuttings or seedlings. it's more focussed on aeration and root development than providing feed for the plants

Thanks man! 

Sun light is freeee, clones are free, soil is from a recycled batch, there really is no reason to not be growing something outside   

Yeah basically I just run a EC test on the used soil, got a shit load of it piling up, EC came in at 2.7... perfect for young plants. So I really didn't have to do much to the soil with regards to re-ammending. I just filled up the big pot up to 70% with the old soil then added a nice 10cm thick layer of worm castings to fill the top of the pot. This was done in early August, the pot was left to stand in the rain and sun just like that for a whole month, then I just flipped the soil and mixed it around a little. EC is now at 4.7 so I am expecting to start feeding her during late veg, but will probably just top up with worm castings again. 

nothing fancy

@Smelly Joe 

Have you seen these, brother? I came across this crazy OCB pack during the first lockdown, someone was asking where to get papers when all the shops where closed and I just started looking for interest sake  I heard RAW also got a pack like this, but I haven't seen it. 

Folds open to serve as a nice little work station and provide a little wind protection when breaking up the buds outdoors.

Still haven't used any of these, just got it cause of the pack  

a single pack of RAW black will last me up to 2 months. 

daily operation on 8-10g of heavy dank in my system will leave me with half finished sentences that's organized chaos!!!

What's a lazy Sunday if not spent at home all day doing as little possible, some clean ups, reorganizing some stuff and possibly some lazy gardening perhaps a little light extra IPM for the garden  

one exciting thing that comes from this is digging up something interesting you had laying around and forgotten about! 

this time it was a 2x 2D square frame I had put together maybe over a year ago. some of you might remember an old thread of mine where I built a grow box from scrap materials. I'll have a looksee if I can find a photo of the box... -best one I could find, inside only

This box was 80x80x100, I took the cube apart, but kept the 2 squares that make up the bottom and top squares whole. Originally I kept it like that so it was easy to put it all back together for future use, but since I got a new tent and no more need for extra space I might aswell use it for something else.... and seeing as it's already square and around the right dimentions for this......... so naturally........ 

this is the same 80x80x100 dimentions, it just doesn't have the 80×80 square at the bottom. 

structure got some brackets keeping the feet in place, sturdy as hell. if I lift the frame the pallet lifts aswell and so the whole pot and all. this wasn't my plan as I already have the green stakes to train the plant, but what's a little extra support? the 100cm tall frame might need to be reduced, although the Sour Lemon OG is sativa dominant in her growth charactaristics, so I am expecting at least a lot of stretch. Plus, remember the 80x80 square that's not being used at the bottom? I might just pop that in as a second layer in the middle if the plan't doesn't get that tall will see how she does cater to her needs 

16 days only in this pot and she has really taken off

I had to put down a few bricks, at first I had the soil covered just with acacia brances, to keep the cats away, but they just end up playing with the acacia branches and mind you they're the monkey thorn kind, the one with the hooked thorns, no idea how a cat does that shit, they sometimes even climb our monkey thorn tree what the f, you can't move in either direction when close to these branches without getting caught up in them, this is literally a nightmare tree to deal with, but not for the domesticated king of the jungle I guess

beautiful thing how nature can be so gentle yet so unforgiving 

well deserved @mantis

8:45 - update for the people - "ek gan gou gou die bossie gebruik hier"

love it!

dis 'n lekker ou jan! 

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND ALL

10 hours ago, McMan said:

I'm in Northern Suburbs in CPT. I think the preflowering could also have been triggered by too drastic of a change in light schedule when moving outside, even if they were still getting a bit more than 12 hours of light when they moved outside. They were on 18hrs a day inside.

yeah very possible that it's mostly due to the dramatic shift. 

Western Cape area technically still going through Spring Equinox as the days are still only up to 14hrs long. Which means nights are 10hrs long. that is closer to a 12/12 cycle than it is to a 18/6 cycle and if you're brining out a clone/plant that's already acustomed to the 18/6 cycle will have high chance of jumping to flower mode. 

For quicker reveg I would suggest maybe using a 50w outdoor floodlight to add about 4hrs of light after the sun went down? I have seen a guy on a farm in Paarl keep all his plants in veg all through winter with some outdoor LEDs. 

8 hours ago, Weskush said:

Bru i have plants outside with only 4 nodes that are preflowering pretty strongly already. Actually only the fems. Very weird. Can't recall that happening last season.

I got the exact opposite going on here, I had a clone I wanted to run outdoors, brought her out beginning of Oct, before transplanting I left her in her small pot for 2 weeks and stood her where she would be planted as to see what amount of hours of sun hits her. 

have to add, I brought down my 18/6 cycle down to 15/9 about a week before bringing her out. helps to be one step ahead sometimes. 

where are you based? I see quite a few people have plants still pushing flowers, at this time of the year they should be going into veg. 

If the carries on to flower she will probably fill her size capacity then finish up, don't think they keep growing much exept for the flower stretch. 

I hope they reveg, those bud sites will then not form properly and kinda fox tail out of what they are doing now into veg and just start pushing leaves and nodes again. Then she will keep on stretching till next year winter.

my goodness  

you defs gona have a few sexy christmas trees man, also very excited to see how this turns out  

just thinking if you bring her out after christmas and continue to veg you got 7 to 8 months all together of veg time still before she gona start pushing flowers, by then she'll probably be huuuuuuuuuge!!!!!  

willing to bet you can pull more than 1kilo off the one in the 200L pot, with the other one not far behind 

Congrats to all the winners!!! Was very interesting following along

1 hour ago, Smelly Joe said:

Funny enough, the beans that is near the plants have pests on them, but the ones away from the plants has none...

So I guess they do attract pests away from our ladies. Wil check again today to confirm on that statement

If your plant got a high Brix% bugs will stay away natutally, but if you got a plant that's a bit compromised and there are bugs in your garden it's just a matter of time before they find the plant. 

In farming we used a lot of sacraficial plants, best example right now would be a rose bush amongst shrubs. growing different berry shrubs we would plant a rose bush at the end of the line. if there are insects present, they'll be on the rose buds and the roses would bud about a month before the berries flowered. giving us about 2 weeks to monitor and act accordingly. 

what we picked up is that you find a rose bush with bugs on it, it's not always just the plants closest to it that also got the bugs, but rather the more unhealthy looking shrubs in and around that line. after a while you can spot the infested plants from a distance. 

One year we where replacing the rose bushes as they where never maintained, we ripped them out and it was a good 6 months before planting new ones because of poor management. This prooved to be quite a interesting experiment, because what we found is the plants that year that you would spot in the distance looking like it's not doing well, you go over to the plant, no bugs!!! 

so the roses didn't act as a sacraficial plant as some of the Agriculture students where soooo religious about, instead it acted as an insect lure ensuring infestations each year and thus ensuring higher doses and more frequent IPM. 

they don't use "sacraficial" plants anymore.  

can't say for sure that this is the case, because again there are so many factors at play and obviously cannabis and bean plants differ from berries and roses. Personally I have just lost the idea of sacraficial plants. I moved over to sticky traps, their colours still attract bugs, that's what they made for, but at least bugs can't infest, live, breed and colonise on your sticky traps. with a "sacraficial" plant you basically inviting and farming insects. 

same here man, thought it was just my area but seems everywhere is the same problem  

If pappa spliff can recall if the seeds where still whole (not crushed or cracked) when dropping them in the soil I think it will be safe to say the seeds where not the problem if they where in good condition when you recieved them. Totemic is reputed through and through, 420sa is not going to take you for a ride either. 

One thing bout the fridge storage, I used to preach fridge storage that lead to many a arguement and a bunch of conclusions. You can test it for yourself. A fridge that gets opened and closed a lot, like a communal house fridge, fluctuates a lot in temperatures. If your seeds are not sealed and air gets trapped inside of where your seeds are kept, there is a minute chance of air condensing inside the container and forming droplets of water or high moisture. a Fridge is not the place you wana sprout seeds cause they likely wont do anything, so high RH and low temp might cause more kak than good. The key to fridge storing is to keep them bone dry and airtight sealed. even better if it's in a fridge that's not being opened all the time. 

It would be in pappa spliffs best interest to share more detail with us on his germing method, stuffing more seeds in someones hand who already lost 11 seeds is not going to solve anything. 

@SonomaSeeds 

what's up man, this is a great forum to be on for SA locals wanting to grow some cannabis. we got all credences round here, first timers all the way through to the seasoned growers with around 20 years of experience behind them. 

how bout making a little intro thread, introduce yourself and show us what you working on? 

Rather than calling it when the week is over, wait till the first set of true leaves with 3 fingers are fully formed before first feed.

a cannabis seedling can grow quite a lot without any food really. 

you gona be running synthetic nutes? 

I was just about to say, that seedling looks a little light green, they don't really take up any nutes at this time so defs count deficiency out, only other reason a plant would turn that colour is over water. 

to pop a seed they need 100% saturation for about 24hrs, so either leaving them in a glass of water or put them in completely saturated soil, from there you need to slowly decrease the amount of water around the seed only making sure to not let the medium dry completely. so you let the medium go to 30% moisture or pick up the pot, it should be light before giving any water again and when you do just give a tiny amount about 2cm away from the base of the seedling. make the roots go looking for the water. don't saturate the medium again untill the seedling has formed a complete rootball. 

note that if you're in a bigger pot it'll take longer to dry out so you need to water much less. 

@Khakibos thanks for the post man. love it!!! 

Kevin Jodrey should come down to Cape Town so the oaks here can show him where to find that original old school skunk, it's super easy, I've heard you can just find it online 

But seriously, there really is some valuable information out there that goes unheard of and it's not because of a lack of information that's available, I think it's a clusterfuck of too much information that lead people to pick the vrot cherries when out cherry picking. 

*this is a good cherry

Alrighty, outdoor season is upon us! I got myself a few free seeds, just going to be playing around with them a bit, nothing serious.

I have 2 big pots, 60L and 80L, ready for action. Planning to run some clones of mine, but first...

I recycled and reamended some soil for my outdoor plants, but before really planting anything important in it I wanted to see if it's any good. Did a few tests, this is one of them.

These are all regulars so I will be putting them in the flower tent in groups to rid out the males. Then clone all the ladies, number them, flower the mothers and select the best girl for further testing. Will probably end up with 2 plants at the most. Small phenohunt if you wana call it that, but it's not quite really.

Group 1 - Hawaiian Cake in Freedom Farms

Group 2 - Hawaiian Cake in reamended Soil

Group 3 - Trainwreck in Freedom Farms

Group 4 - Trainwreck in reamended soil (added more perlite)

These plants are all between 4 and 6 weeks old, popped in sphagnum peatmoss and transfered to these pots a week after they popped. Only been getting clean water, no nutrients. The only signs of stress was the leaf damage from the few days of heavy wind that smacked their first sets of true leaves a while back when they didn't have any wind shade. They seem to be growing just fine, I have tested the EC of the soil, came in at 4.6, which is really fine for a young plant in an organic situation.

I went ahead and brought out the first clone for the outdoor season, planted her in the 80L pot she'll be in till harvest. Sour Lemon OG