74 replies to this topic

[Neptunechild]

Amazing, absolutely amazing! Thank you so much for all the info. I'm in awe and stunned, so, no...thera re no questions. I have to read all of your posts again and again to truly understand what the fuck is going on here. Thank you very much for being part of this community and for sharing everything you do.

Don't aim to get responses...just know that many people do indeed love what you share. I myself was a silent reader for nearly 3 years before I even joined mycotopia and was always amazed by the stuff people share over here....

And this is basically a mushroom forum in first place...I also don't get that attention that mushroom growers get around here..But that's not what I'm here for...

Blessings and much love brother, keep up the amazing work!

Namaste

[Nsnail]

Jansteen, don't be discouraged by lack of responses here! This is a goldmine of knowledge. I've personally been following this and learning little bits from you along the way. I've never chimed in because I have minimal knowledge of cannabis and coca plants. All this scientific botany stuff is super interesting. I've been trying to find a PDF of plants from test tubes ever since you mentioned it. Keep up the good work!

[JanSteen]

Thanks for the kind words of recognition guys! You keep me motivated to continue writing stuff down for others.
If there are any plant related questions, or things you want to get cleared up by a person instead of googling around, feel free to pose them here.
It really doesn't matter what kind of plant, or if you hijack this thread with a lot of questions. I just want a cosy place for people to hang around, and to learn something while they're at it.

Questions help me understand subjects better, which is always a good thing. I think it was some wise man who once said: If you can't make a 5 year old kid understand a subject, you've not educated yourself well enough. I agree with that. So even if you don't know anything about a certain thing, just ask! If I can't explain it to somebody with minimal knowledge, I'll make sure I'm able to do so later.

[JanSteen]

A small update on the hybrid coca x novo.
It's not as vigorous as one would suspect with an F1 hybrid. It's actually pretty slow compared to any other plant. Leaves are off-shape, thinner, pointier, way more elliptical.
It does branch pretty easy though; at the 3rd node some leafs started popping up, whereas non-hybdrids tend to do that after a node or 10.

It's going to be a couple of tough ones to keep alive, I assume. But that's the sport, right?
I can't comment yet on the alkaloid content, since it would be unwise to rip off leaves until the plants are fully established.

In the mean time I'm feminizing my Punisher#2, both green and purple phenos with pollen from a green cutting. I found some oldschool Durban Poison with the old school flavor profile, so I'm pollinating those as well.
Punisher #2 pink autoflower F2 males are relocated to catch some pollen and will be used on the females of the same type, as well on the white rihanna #3.
WR#3 is a very, very, very late autoflower. It can easily grow for 3-4 months before flowering.

Semi-autoflowers don't exist in my book: they're either non-auto or full-auto. A "semi-autoflower" is just a regular AF with a different/slower/laterinduced biological clock.

[JanSteen]

I'm getting arrogant about how well my work is going. No really. And here's why: 7 years ago I started experimenting with breeding cannabis. My intention at first was to just eliminate the need of seed dispensaries. I think they're too expensive, they sometimes deliver low quality without taking responsibility (80% of them at least) but what drove me the most was the lack of.. How do I say this.. Continuity? Anyhow, what I mean is that sometimes you buy a White widow, and it's the best tasting, best yielding plant you've ever had. The year after that, the seeds from the same strain, from the same store, suddenly suck monkeyballs. I don't like that. I can be pretty autistic in those cases.

 

After a few years of meddling around, I struck gold with the Project White Rihanna. I didn't know I struck gold, I didn't even intend to. It just happened. As soon as I realised what I was dealing with - some 5 years ago? - I started documenting and actively breeding these gems to what they are now. So, where are we now?

 

This.. This is where we are.

Lets start this slow, alright? Here are some regular, store bought "XL Fem. autoflowers".

 

Nothing too special right? Just two, regular run off the mill (is that how you use that phrase?) autoflowers in a 9 litre container with some regular potting soil. They seem pretty alright, don't they?

I disagreed, 6-5 years ago. This wasn't good enough for me. This wasn't fool proof, this wasn't disease resistant, this wasn't worth the space in a backyard. Remember, here in the NL's it's illegal to have cannabis plants, however, when you have 5 plants or less, the police only drops by if you case trouble or if somebody thinks you are causing trouble. It's a grey area. But to give up garden space, and 'amount of plants' for a mere 15 grams is just something that doesn't sound right..

 

I got to work, and a few years later, this is the result. Notice the size of the lighter, which is the same in both pictures. Both containers have the same amount of soil, the same amount of nutes, the same conditions (with the only variable being that one container is standing a few feet away from the other).

White Rihanna #3. Or, White Rihanna F3. Sown in April, just like the plant mentioned earlier. Except this one, only just started flowering, while the other store-bought plant is almost halfway done flowering.

 

Another pic from a birds-eye view. Literally, because I couldn't see the screen of my camera while making this picture. I'm 1,88cm tall (+/- 6 feet and 2 inches). This plant reaches my shoulders, and it has only just begun flowering.

Which means it'll be done before September, meaning that it will avoid the terrible autumn weather we're used to..

 

Isn't that amazing? I do think so.

Do you guys think there would be a market for these kind of genetics? What would you ask for these seeds? I'm thinking about maybe opening a little webstore of my own with a few strains. I'm wondering what people would like to pay for it, and if it's even something possible without plunging myself into debt.

[Aminrcraoftm]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd be into buying some seeds from this for planting next year. And with legalization right around the corner in lots of places, I'd expect larger plants to be more desirable than before (at least for commercial growers). If you opened your own webstore, that would be pretty cool. You already have a good reputation, so I'd rather buy from you than random businesses. As for cost? I have no idea what you should ask, but I really hate that seeds go for so much. One website I looked at had $75 for ten seeds as the lowest price. It's pretty crazy imo.

[JanSteen]

Thanks for the response! $75 as the lowest price for 10 seeds?! That's ridiculous! Well, maybe not that ridiculous when I think about it.. Seed stores around here sell them for 21 euro's per 3 seeds, which is basically the same price. All things considered, I'd say that 5 euro's (around 5,50 USD?) is my maximum price per seed. Packaging should be free, shipping around the cost of the actual stamps, so that would be around 2 euro's for Europe, 4 euro's for Worldwide shipping. I need to think this through some more. Do some soul searching about what I want with these genetics. In the mean time, I'll keep improving this strain of course.

[Spooner]

Some folks read more than they write so keep disgorging info, because it is being consumed behind your back.  Thanks amigo.

 

now for a short diversion

 

???Why is acidified water so beneficial to cactus growing in alkaline sandy soil???

Does the acidified water dissolve enough minerals to feed the cactus before it is neutralized by the soil?  And is it too little acid to change the alkaline soil that the Lophophora's seem to like so much?

 

now back to your regularly scheduled program 

[JanSteen]

The correct pH helps a lot for the uptake of nutrients. Plants actively secrete molecules to upset their osmosis and to attract molecules to correct for that difference in gradient.
It kind of happens like the pic below - I couldn't load it here, so follow the link if you'd like -, based on what the plant needs (anion or kation) and the surrounding pH. If the pH is too alkaline (high) the plant can't beat that with just it's own secretions, because of the unbalance in total (sum of all OH- and H+) would still be alkaline, it would need some support by either low pH water of low pH soil (acidic).

http://2.bp.blogspot...00/Untitled.png

However, there's more to it; acidic water helps (re)dissolve stuff like silicium, and many other trace elements that are greatly beneficial to most plants. Without help from plant secretions.

I'm not an expert on cacti, nor do I intend to become one, but it sounds weird to me to put plants in alkaline soil and feed them acidic water.. At first glance at least. Why not acidic soil in the first place? Most likely because the plants would burn; cacti have limited respiration and very, very limited transpiration. High salt availability - which is the case in low pH, acidic soils - would mean the roots would just dry out or start expelling water due to the concentration difference between the soil and the roots. Plants can only actively 'play' with osmotic differences between certain levels. If these levels are too high, the plant will just kill itself. Like one of my teachers once said: It's not the plant itself that's so extremely rare, it's the environment it grows optimally in, that's rare.
This however, leaves me to believe that cacti should perform pretty well in acidic soils that contain nearly no nutrients. But good acidic soil usually contains a lot of organic material and stays wet for a long period of time, which is not preferred when you are growing desert plants. This explains why they don't do well in bogs or peat patches.
Let's not forget that most soil fungi, mycorrhizae and soil bacteria usually perform better with slight acidic surroundings, thus being able to help a plant benefit better from their interactions. They can only do their job in moist situations, so within hours after watering, they activate and do their thing. This contributes to a slight increase in growth speed.

Eventually the water will be neutralized by the soil's OH- (forming H2O) or the H+ will form interactions/bonds with clay particles or other minerals. Over a long period of time however, you'd see that the soil would become increasingly acidic. But since the amount of water isn't that great, I'd say a 2 litre pot will have a drop of 1 on the pH scale in something around 5 years. Of course this means you'd need to add some more lime or stuff that balances things out again.

[Spooner]

Very helpful additional information Jan, thanks for lending your deeper knowledge to a simple hobbiest like myself.

For reference the article that got me interesred in this aspect of cactus culture is; http://ralph.cs.cf.a... Alkalinity.pdf

 

Since cactus soils drain very rapidly, there is no standing water, watering is infrequent, and the soil volume is so much larger than the water volume, neutraization of the soil is not a major issue.

 

Acidifying the water is primarily a counterbalance to the artificial alkilinity in municilapal water supplies, designed to keep the pipes from deteriating.  It is only a matter of bringing the acidity down to 6 or maybe 5.5 if needed (a single spoonful of vinegar to 5 gallons water).

[JanSteen]

Over here the tap water is around ph 8. So we need a cup of vinegar to get it down to around 6.
I don't know the international term, but vinegar contains acetic acid, a "two-sided" acid. The COO-group can take up a H+ and release it again, creating a balance or buffer in some way. This makes it hard to measure and it takes a lot of stirring to get an accurate measurement. An hour later, the pH could be back at where it started, depending on how much vinegar is used and of what type.

Personally I prefer using either H2SO4 (sulphuric acid). It disintegrates in both SO4- and H+. This acid works only one way, and releases the H+ completely without stabilizing later or acting as a buffer. The SO4- is taken up by the fungi and bacteria living in the soil, and used for protein formation amongst other things. Later, it will enter the plant as a food source. Usually the stuff is sold as +/-96% sulphuric acid drain cleaner, so just a few bucks worth of drain cleaner will, in fact, last a loooong time. A single mL in 3 pints of water can lower the pH with something close to 2 pH-points. For me, that means I've spend 5 bucks on +/- 1000 waterings. That's 500 weeks, or 9 years.

But most of all I prefer hooking up some (gutter)drainpipes to a water collection barrel. Rainwater enhanced with lichen and moss living on the roofs creates a good buffering water with the right pH value from the start; around 6 or so. It's quite the fool proof system.

[JanSteen]

A little update on the White Rihanna project. Things are looking fine and dandy. The next generation is ensured, and it keeps improving.

 

 

 

 

I think this kind of shows how fool proof this plant can be.

 

 

[JanSteen]

The coca mother plants, I've strapped them to their pots with thread, because they're growing too tall. This wasn't low stress training, but pretty heavy BDSM. They don't seem to care much.

 

Seedlings, around 5 months of age

 

Seedlings around 1 week old. With the husk still on. The other had a rotting husk, it snapped it's own neck. That one will probably die soon. That's not an issue, since I don't have any leftover space anyways.

 

 

Off to the outdoors, here are some pics from the back yard.

 

Above we see a few phenotypes of the WR#3.

 

And those are two pics from the Punisher AF project. The bottom pic shows some pinkish hues, those are genetic. The upper pic shows the green pheno.

The pink will increase when the plants age, so at the end of flowering I'm expecting somewhat more purplish.

[JanSteen]

Let's talk dirt. No, yea, I mean, literal dirt.
One of the most overseen materials in plant media, maybe, is clay. Clay?! The stuff that's used to make cups, vases and bricks? That kind of clay?! Exactly!

When was the last time you made a soil and incorporated clay? You don't know, right?
Clay can hold ions in many forms, it forms complexes with metals and it's a general purpose nutrient-disposal-unit in the soil. It knows no quick-release system, it improves structure and it holds water for a very, very long time. You might think clay pellets and hydro pellets are basically clay, right? Well, it's not anymore. As soon as you bake clay, you lock in everything. This chemical process is nearly irreversible. That's why we don't like them in our compost or backyard; the decomposition time of clay pellets is around 150 years, if not longer. I mean, pottery from 40.000 years ago is still found in excavations sometimes. Baked clay = useless. Fresh clay = the tightest shit.

That's why a friend an I travel towards the local river with a few empty buckets sometimes. The clay near our local river is packet in metals, causing grey and orange colorations depending on whether it's been exposed to fresh air. Air causes the metals to oxidize, causing rust.

If you can find yourself a good source of clay, go get it! Grind it down to particles the size of peanuts and incorporate it into your soils. You'll see that in the end, you don't have to give extra chelated iron and that moisture balance improves greatly. There's no reason not to, other than maybe the clay is contaminated with herbicides and pesticides. That's why I collect it near a river that contains living fish and other wildlife.
I don't know where I was going with this, but I recommend everybody to try it. Especially in difficult to grow plants like coca, and bonsai mixtures.
Natural clay in my humble opinion, is far superior to what you can get in a store. In stores it's all baked pellets, meant to improve aeration of the soil. But there's always perlite for that, which does a better job at it too. Go visit your local river! Go hang out there for a while, grab a rock and bash some clay from the riverside walls. Citrus plants love it!
Just make sure you don't use it as a top layer, because it will lock everything below it.. Make sure you mix particles/clumps into the soil, and make sure you check out how much better your plants will perform.

Clay will harbor your micro-organisms like mycorrhizae and nitrifying bacteria, making them easily transportable and even transplantable (meaning that when you dispose your old soil, you can transfer these micro-organisms to your new soil like doing petri-transfers, but with clay). This means you don't have to keep buying Stamets vegetable tablets or prefab micro-organism soil mixes, but you can just pass these organisms on to the next container. Stop starting from scratch, start starting from developed cultures! Go bulk! Even better; the selection for your plant has already taken place in this 'used up' soil: the mycorrhizae that cling on to that specific type of vegetable or plant, are the ones that will survive and be strong enough to settle in the clay. If you're growing these same type of plants again, you can use the old clay from the established container in a new container to speed up the entire 'symbiotic husbandry'.
Symbiotic relations can take a long time to establish, sometimes even months. How awesome is it, that with some simple clay you could speed up this process every time, after the first connection has been made?

Yay for clay!
Sorry for the bad choice of words, the weird sentencing, I've only been awake for a few minutes and wanted to share this.
Have a nice day!

[Neptunechild]

I hope you know that you're one of my personal botanical gurus, especially on the none-cacti part of my hobby.

Keep the knowledge coming and spread it, thank you very much.

 

Namaste

[Heirloom]

I don't post in this thread often as I got nothing to contribute. I have learned a lot though.

[Spooner]

My soil is red clay, but when I add it to my soil mixes it just slowly disolves and there are no peanut size pieces to left to reuse.  Do you just add some of the old soil to the new to get the transfer you mention?

[JanSteen]

My soil is red clay, but when I add it to my soil mixes it just slowly disolves and there are no peanut size pieces to left to reuse. Do you just add some of the old soil to the new to get the transfer you mention?

Well, it's store bought red clay isn't it? That stuff tends to be fluffed up to yield maximum volume so that companies can sell you hundreds of gallons weighing just a few pounds.
If it's natural found clay, it's most likely not that condensed; coming from a toplayer. A good clay around here, is only found on the river sides where the slope allows us to get 6 feet below the surface of grasslands.
If you dig deep enough, you'll find the condensed stuff that doesn't wash away that easily. It will most likely be blue in color due to the fact that iron particles haven't oxidized. Red clay gets its color from the air oxidizing the metal, that's why I assume you've bought it in a store or found it somewhere in an agricultural area. This assumption could be wrong, but I'd like to hear that from you so we can look into this some more.
Adding old soil always helps. Unless of course, you're dealing with major bug infestations. Transferring live worms works well, but not as good as transferring soil (particles).

@The rest: thanks for the kind words! This motivates me to keep writing interesting stuff about plants.

[Heirloom]

I enjoy seeing your plants a question on the coca plants what time of year is best to order my seeds, I've seen seeds for sale from South American grows any suggestions on when to order. The temperatures here is not a problem still in uppers 80 to 90 and I am willing to use heat mats or space heaters if required.

Nice suggesting to dig clay out of the side of a river or stream bank getting the clay way below the surface, way easier than digging 2 meters down from a field.

namaste

Edited by Heirloom , 20 September 2017 - 03:07 PM.

[Spooner]

 

My soil is red clay, but when I add it to my soil mixes it just slowly disolves and there are no peanut size pieces to left to reuse. Do you just add some of the old soil to the new to get the transfer you mention?

Well, it's store bought red clay isn't it? That stuff tends to be fluffed up to yield maximum volume so that companies can sell you hundreds of gallons weighing just a few pounds.
If it's natural found clay, it's most likely not that condensed; coming from a toplayer. A good clay around here, is only found on the river sides where the slope allows us to get 6 feet below the surface of grasslands.
If you dig deep enough, you'll find the condensed stuff that doesn't wash away that easily. It will most likely be blue in color due to the fact that iron particles haven't oxidized. Red clay gets its color from the air oxidizing the metal, that's why I assume you've bought it in a store or found it somewhere in an agricultural area. This assumption could be wrong, but I'd like to hear that from you so we can look into this some more.
Adding old soil always helps. Unless of course, you're dealing with major bug infestations. Transferring live worms works well, but not as good as transferring soil (particles).

@The rest: thanks for the kind words! This motivates me to keep writing interesting stuff about plants.

 

 

Not store bought.  there used to be a brick  factory couple of miles from me making red bricks.  All the soil around here is clay once you get 6 inches below surface.  My garden is mostly horse shit compost and the natural red clay all mixed together.  Lot of work, but grows well once the soil is amended with organic matter.