u/Nillows

Gave my girls their main defoliation undercuts this week, ready to add reinforcement structure as the buds start to stack and find their spots.

Til next time!

Wrote this one today, trying not to be too cryptic and maintaining a rhyme scheme is tricky. Hope you guys find it fun.

Hello from Canada, just providing another update to show off how my fleet of mobile living soil chariots are doing!

The pictures speak for themselves I'd say! I'm very happy with how long I was able to extend their veg season with the wagons given how late I got them outside this year (I think it was early June)... For some anecdotal contrast, I have a buddy who lives 5 mins away and his plants already have swelling pistils starting to form the buds. I estimate my plants are about 10-14 days behind his, in terms of what time of year the plants think it is, so I think moving the plants around to follow the sun gave me an extra 2 weeks - cool 😎. The plants also got their first haircuts since my last update, and will be getting one more once I get a better look at how the buds are setting in the canopy.

Anyway, as always - below this paragraph is my current weekly weekend fertilizer feeding stack. I noticed a slight amount of yellowing on one of the smaller plants starting a week ago; starting from the inner stems of the leaf fingers...so I ramped up the epsom salts to 4 grams (from ~2.0 grams) per 5 gallons of lake water starting the weekend before last to clear that up. Otherwise, the feeding schedule is going as planned, no signs of any nutrient imbalances that I can see, and they're fending off pests with the help of the dragonflies. The sacrificial nasturtiums I have planted everywhere in my backyard are happily keeping the aphids, gnats, and caterpillars busy.

Calcium Nitrate - 6.0 grams (going to ramp this down next week)

Potassium Nitrate - 3.0 grams

Epsom Salt - 4.0 grams

Potassium Sulphate - 1.5 grams

Monopotassium Sulphate - 2.0 grams

Royal Gold Fulvic Acid - 40ml (0.1% strength)

Lake Water (no chlorine) - 5 gallons

I also added another 60 or so red wiggler worms to each wagon.

This upcoming week, I'll be adding my solid structure supports in preparation for the buds, so another layer of netting but with some solid stakes to take the weight off the branches now that they're so spread out. Separately to that, my weekly Wednesday worm casting compost tea will be getting an updated recipe this week. I'm going to brew it longer (36H instead of 24H) for the second wave protozoans, reduce molasses, and start adding kelp and cold pressed fish hydrolysate into the brew bag with the castings. I'll post that recipe too some time after Wednesday when I brew it.

Til next time!

Howdy everyone, just wanted to show off how my canopy is developing these last few weeks before flowering starts. I've just been bending, tucking and topping, nothing too fancy.

I've kept up with moving them in the sunlight each day, salt fertilizer's on Sundays, soil biology tea days on Wednesdays 🪱, and lake water every day in between.

The fertilizer recipe this week (per 5 gallon bucket). Ramped up Nitrogen a bit in preparation for stretch, and started introducing a little bit of potassium sulfate to get them ready for the higher doses during flower.

This is my 'transition' blend for the next two weeks unless I notice any yellowing in the fan leaves.

Calcium Nitrate: 6 grams

Potassium Nitrate: 4.5 grams

Epsom Salt: 3.2 grams

Potassium Sulfate: 1.5 grams

Monopotassium phosphate: 2 grams

0.1% Fulvic Acid: 45 ml

No change to the worm compost tea week, but I'll be adding kelp soon and will be sure to update the recipe when i get there.

Til next time

Just posting another update for my constituents, it's been about 2 weeks since my last update and I've doubled my weekly fertilizer amounts since my last post, I'll put the updated amount below. I've also topped them this last weekend and got some close ups of the new terminal branches.

This week, I wanted to show everyone how I brew my worm compost/bacterial soil infusion. It's not fancy, but does require some consideration when putting one together.

To start, the insulated Coleman cooler. Mine is 64ish quarts and holds exactly three 5-Gallon water-cooler jugs of RO water. The Coleman cooler is useful because it helps keep the temperature of the brew stable and consistent, and allows you to utilize an aquarium heater in the colder months, even when brewing outside like I do. I won't need that til September though when it starts getting colder at night, the brew has to stay between 22C and 28C to be optimal, but anything above 20C and below 30C works. Another bonus of the cooler is that it has an 'ice drain' plug at the bottom that makes filling up a bucket super easy.

In the (sterile) RO water I have four separate 4 inch flat circular air stones that have tiny suction cup feet to attach to the sides of the cooler at the bottom. Attached to those air stones, I have a 4 way air manifold attached to a 640 gallon per hour air pump (I use vivosun's). It's important to keep the brew saturated with oxygen so that aerobic bacteria are selected for.

Next, I have two nut bags, which act as a simple filter to keep the ~ two big handfuls of worm castings inside each. Whatever you use (old sock) it has to be water permeable, because you want the bacteria from inside the worm castings to be able to use the water to get outside into the cooler which is where I have also added 15ml/5Gallons (45ml total for my brew here) of pure unsulfered black strap molasses.

When adding molasses, it is best to put it at the bottom of a cup and repeatedly rinse it with the RO water as you pour it into the cooler. Fill the cup, pour, repeat. The molasses is so thick that if you pour it directly into the cooler, there's a good chance it will just hit the bottom as a glob and not dissolve properly. I close the lid and let it bubble vigorously for 24 hours.

The reason I do all of this is to essentially produce mass quantities of tiny fertilizer factories that live amongst the roots, readily stocked whenever the plant needs it. Right now you yourself have bacteria in your gut that helps you digest food into a form that you can use. This symbiotic relationship is not unique to humans, and unique specialized bacteria can be found in the guts of most animals catered to whatever that animal eats. The worm castings introduced to the RO water contain a large amount of bacteria that has symbiotically evolved to break down raw organics that the worm eats and converts them into a form that is bioavailable to plants.

By adding a simple carbohydrate like molasses, and saturating the water with oxygen, it creates the perfect petri dish for fast growing aerobic bacteria (with a doubling time of ~30 minutes) to exponentially take over the entire cooler over the next 24 hours. These bacteria are what I add to the soil every week to keep the population in the soil saturated. I have to be careful not to do this too quickly after fertilizer salt day though because the salts I use as fertilizer at high levels will suck the water out of the bacteria and kill them... so I give the plants 3 or 4 days, as well as water them every day between with lake water to reduce the fertilizers to a safe level for the bacteria.

Speaking of, my current fertilizer salt strength (per 5 gallons of lake water) I fed last Sunday. Still doing one fertilizer day every Sunday.

Calcium Nitrate - 6 Grams

Potassium Nitrate - 4.5 Grams

Magnesium Sulphate - 2.8 Grams

Monopotassium Phosphate - 1.4 Grams

Royal Gold Fulvic Acid 0.1% - 20ml

Fulvic acid is quite interesting actually, but expensive. I found a supplier this week though and was able to buy a kilogram of powdered fulvic acid for $50, which should last me many many years.

Anyway, this post is long enough I think, stretch season is soon and I'm looking forward to filling the rest of my rolling canopies.

Til next time!

Was 32C here today, but 40C with the humidity! 🌡️

Remember to stay hydrated and stay cool out there!

Just a couple snaps of my handsome lad waiting outside my bedroom this morning while he tried to figure out why I was up so early today 🤗🌄🥱

Got about 4-6 more weeks til first stretch, so today I did the first round of HST topping. Gonna keep spreading it horizontally in the trellis as the new nodes get longer, hoping to fill as much of the canopy as possible before late July stretch.

Sunday is fertilizer day, so I took pictures to document the fertilizers I am using and their relative strengths at this stage.

Keep in mind these listed ratios are made for 5 gallons of water **and** they are only at quarter strength compared to what I would run in coco coar or other nutrient less medium; so multiply by 4 if you want to emulate for indoor grows.

Living soil is a slow cooked meal, so I just add a dash of nitrate salts once a week to keep the level of bioavailable nutrients slightly higher than what nature can provide without killing the entire soil biome. It really helps in flower when the plant is at max PK draw and the microbiome can't keep up with the demand.

Anyway...

Calcium nitrate - 3.0g

Potassium nitrate - 2.3g

Epsom Salt - 1.4g

Monopotassium phosphate - 0.7g

I'm doing mostly a living soil with RO water and worm casting compost tea on Wednesday/Thursdays. I'll make a post with my method for that process later this week.

Til next time!

Zip tied the corners down so they don't fold in, added some 6" garden staples to do some LST and fill up the canopy above.

Also planted a white clover cover on all the exposed soil. My plan is to cake the clover in diatomaceous earth. It rained this week so I'm probably going to have to do another round of clover in a week or so when I see where they successfully rooted.

Til next time,

😎😎😎

I've moved to a property with much more sun, so going to take full advantage of it.

​

Strains:

​

Wedding Cake x4

​

Purple Soda x3

​

Purple Sunset x 1

​

Bought my own nitrate salts and planning on supplementing the living soil once or twice a week with distilled water and mineral salts. Aside from that, they'll be getting fresh lake water every day in the heat of the summer. I just planted these so am giving the roots some time to spread their legs before their first feeding.

​

Aiming for 6-8 lbs which should last me and my bro a year...hopefully.

I've moved to a property with much more sun, so going to take full advantage of it.

​

Strains:

​

Wedding Cake x4

Grape Soda x3

Purple Sunset x 1

​

Bought my own nitrate salts and planning on supplementing the living soil once or twice a week with distilled water. Aside from that they'll get fresh lake water every day in the heat of the summer. I just planted these so am giving the roots some time to spread their legs before their first feeding.

​

Aiming for 6-8 lbs which should last me and my bro a year.

If patience and tenacity was an animal, it would be the Hydra. Nearly-biologically immortal, they always get back up when they've been pushed down, and get right back to their one love in life: flailing wildly for scuds.

Found this old golf rules book in an old landlords house in Aurora, Ontario, Canada a few years ago and kept it just in case it was real. I believe it was the prior tenants property that they had abandoned before I moved in with some of their other furniture. My landlord didn't see the need to throw all their stuff out and said it came with the rental, so it's mine now.

​

If it is legitimate, Tiger would have been 24 when the book was released, and it's signed off in such a way that makes me think someone handed him this book to autograph shortly after his big win of the 1997 Master's tournament at the age of 21.

​

What do you guys think? Who else writes a hand written note in an official Rules of Golf handbook and signs it TIGER other than Tiger Woods? Something just feels odd about this whole thing that makes me think it could be legit, but I'm not sure.

​

It would be nice to see some of his handwriting from the early 2000's to compare, that's for sure!

Just put this together for fun after I saw how expensive CO2 systems are for tanks (I'm new to the hobby).

It's made from a 100ml pressure-equalizing addition funnel containing 20 grams of anhydrous citric acid dissolved in 100ml of water. I set the drip rate to about 1 per minute or so; that way it lasts a few days dripping the full 100ml. The weak citric acid solution is dripping into the top of a 1000ml side-arm filtering flask through a standard 24/40 joint and contains 50 grams of baking soda dissolved in 500ml of water.

The only byproducts after the reaction are CO2 gas, H2O, and sodium citrate, which is so benign that it is frequently used in cheese sauce recipes as a thickener.

Cost (prices in CAD $ 🇨🇦):

As a benchmark, a company near me called 'Canada Welding Supply' lists filled food-grade CO2 cylinders at $160 for 5 lb, $190 for 10 lb, and $320 for 20 lb. Its refills are $48, $55, and $82, respectively.

In contrast, my setup:

100ml PE addition funnel + 24/40 glass stopper - ~$50

1000ml side-arm filtering flask - ~$40

Plastic tubes, air stone, brass hose barb reducer - ~$15

And ongoing costs are lower as well.

1KG citric acid - $12

1KG baking soda - $4

Total upfront cost: ~$120

Anyway, I assume that I generate ~4g of CO2 a day because a full 20g solution should generate a little over 13g CO2 total paired with the fact that I reload every 3 days. It works out to about 10 cents of raw material per day, so $36.50 a year in ongoing material costs.

Obviously pressurized tanks have a 'set and forget' value, as well a 20lb tank would last me over 6 years at that output...as long as it doesn't break. At this point in the hobby though, I don't mind taking a few minutes to mix up the chemicals and tune the drip rate every few days. I spend enough time in front of my tank anyway lol and I'm not made of money.

Thanks for reading of you made it this far!

Peace ✌️

Doing some Monstera wet stick propagation for the first time (found a 3 foot long stem in my neighbours spring cleaning waste). Half of them developed roots first, and are out of the aquarium resting like little logs on some soil with roots pointed down and buried. The other half of the brood developed their 'horns' first, but have yet to develop roots. It's been about 2 weeks since chop day.

I'm wondering if this is common, like 50/50 and just be more patient, or, if the absence of roots at this point is a sign of non-viability.

So far I'm loving the hobby, thanks for any advice!

Surprise Koji Kondo appreciation post!

What's your favourite song written by Nintendo's very own Mozart?