First ever grow

[disco survivor]

 

Been growing all sorts of veg in the greenhouse now for many years. I've got the set up to a point where we get extremely high yields from all the plants. Even grew honeydew Mellon last year from seeds collected from a supermarket purchased melon.

Having suffered from chronic back pain for a number of years, I recently tried some CBD products from Northern Spain and couldn't believe the results. That has  spurred me on to try and produce my own CBD products (strictly for my own use). I'm going to employ exactly the same growing methods I use for cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers in a sample cannabis grow. I'll use the same homemade growing medium and the same set up and keep this topic post updated - good or bad !

 

Firstly the set up - I use standard builders buckets but completely remove the bottom of the bucket. These buckets then sit on a prepared bed of 20cm deep growing medium (the same as I fill the pots with). The plants develop a free running and deep root system with no real restrictions.

Growing medium - I use the following mixture - 2 parts peat free compost, 1 part sterile soil, 1 part horticultural vermiculite (fine), 0.5 part well rotted manure (12 months). To that, I add bonemeal and seaweed (about 100g of each per half cubic metre of mixed compost medium). This is then left for 3 months with worms introduced straight away. When the pH reaches 6.5, it's ready to use. All growing medium is recycled.

I'm going to try 3 x Royal auto (CBD) and one Tatanka Pure (CBD). I'll isolate one of the Royal Auto's and use the same technique I employ to generate male flowers on female cucumber plants to see if I can do the same for the cannabis plant (3mM STS spray). With the Tatanka, I'm going to try propagation to see how successful that is then treat a couple of the cuttings with STS spray.

 

Seem to have some beginners luck as I've got 100% germination from the 4 seeds I acquired. I placed the seeds in damp cotton wool balls and into a sealed sandwich bag (with some air present). Then into a heated propagator (lay on a microfibre cloth) and into a dark cupboard. Germination took 24 hrs after which, the seeds were placed into pots and sat in the same heated propagator. A bowl of water was also placed in the propagator for humidity. Seeds broke the surface after 2 days. They were then placed into the greenhouse after 4 days as the seedling were getting too 'leggy" on the windowsill (I'll invest in a growlight for next time).

 

First image shows the pot set up - open ended bucket on a 20cm bed. Before building the bed in the greenhouse, I used to place the open ended bucket onto a tomato grow bag (similar results)

Second and third images show typical yields for tomatoes and cucumbers - normally get 20+ cucumbers from each plant and many kilos of tomatoes during the grow season

Last image is the cannabis seedlings as they are now.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by disco survivor

[handysmoker]

Sounds like you're well under way ....

[MindSoup]

Welcome to the boards mate, looks like your off to a good start. If your good with tomatoes then you should do well with canna, their reasonably similar in their wants and needs. STS will also work to reverse a female and create feminised pollen. 

 

The only potential issue I can see is humidity, flowering cannabis plants and especially autos IME are prone to fungal infections in high humidity, low air movement environments, so a crowded greenhouse is less than ideal. The one suggestion I would make is to keep them in normal pots and keep them outside once they're a few weeks into flower, only bringing them in if there's going to be rain. An auto won't really root out more than 10L or so of soil anyway so the bottomless pots probably won't offer any real advantage. Also autos will trigger into flower when they feel root restriction, so you want to get them into their final pots within the first 2 weeks or so, most people sow the seed straight into the final pots. 

 

E2A CBD is great for pain, but I tell you what THC is even better, I'd encourage you to grow a THC dominant plant as well (or maybe one with a 1:1 ratio) so you can experiment with them, I think you'll find them very effective. 

 

Good luck!

Edited May 31, 2023 by MindSoup

[130RMORGA03]

Your tomatoes and cucumbers are looking scrumptious they look 2 months ahead of mine. 

Can't wait to see how your autos turn out. Good luck 

[Hashslag]

Welcome to the site mate  I'll be pulling up a chair for this one. You seem to know your onions (or at least your cucumbers ) so it'll be cool to see you put your own personal expertise into action with your new canna plants. As @MindSoup said, make sure you get those autos into final pots before it's too late - I did a little outdoor grow last year and I made the mistake of keeping them in their small pots for way too long, yield was pretty crap and one of the plants was severely stunted (lovely flavour and effects nonetheless) but yeah, it's a tip worth taking note of.

 

E2A - One other thing - make sure you go easy on nutrients for your autos. They don't tend to like too much and can suffer from burning if you overdo it, and wait until flowering before you start feeding  

 

Best of luck with it though, and keep us posted 

Edited May 31, 2023 by Hashslag

[Lubdub]

1 hour ago, disco survivor said:

I use the following mixture - 2 parts peat free compost, 1 part sterile soil, 1 part horticultural vermiculite (fine), 0.5 part well rotted manure (12 months). To that, I add bonemeal and seaweed (about 100g of each per half cubic metre of mixed compost medium). This is then left for 3 months with worms introduced straight away. When the pH reaches 6.5, it's ready to use. All growing medium is recycled.

Your mix sounds solid  Remember to top dress about 4 weeks in to keep the soil rich. Bit of worm castings and kelp meal or similar is all it needs really.
Get those seedlings into the final pots as soon as they've developed some nice roots and they'll explode.


 

1 hour ago, MindSoup said:

An auto won't really root out more than 10L or so of soil anyway

Err have to disagree with that, bro. Grown autos in 18l pots that rooted it out wall to wall.
And now growing in 25l pots and cant get my finger down the side its so jam packed with roots - albeit no idea what's going on deep in the pot for the 25s. My biggest autos yet.

[MindSoup]

Well I stand corrected, and actually come to think of it I did do an auto bubblelicious in a 15-20L pot a few years ago and it did really well . Bigger risk of fucking the grow with an early over watering, but as @disco survivor is an experienced gardener they'll probably be able to avoid that pitfall. 

 

So maybe bigger pots, but ones  that you can still move around to suit the weather. 

[Lubdub]

I'm more paranoid about the packed greenhouse and any potential pests. I'd be on standby with a sprayer of neem cake on the ready. 

[disco survivor]

34 minutes ago, Lubdub said:

I'm more paranoid about the packed greenhouse and any potential pests. I'd be on standby with a sprayer of neem cake on the ready. 

The greenhouse I'm using for this test grow is fairly clear. I've also got Mint and Lavender in the greenhouses which act as a pretty powerful pest deterrent. I also make my own mosquito repellent from Lavender oil extract - best there is.

[disco survivor]

 

Thanks for all the great advice.

Decided to rush the Auto's into the buckets straight away (never done anything auto before). The greenhouse is fairly clear on the side I'm using for this test grow. I've also got Mint and Lavender growing in the greenhouses which acts as a very powerful pest deterrent (I also extract the oil from the Lavender and make Mosquito repellent so I know it works )

 

I've offset 2 of the auto's in the buckets to carry out some low stress training (part of the experimental first grow). The auto to the right in the middle image will be placed in a small plastic greenhouse (when it arrives) and that one will be used to see if I can produce feminised seeds.

 

The cucumbers will be trailed up netting at the back to give us a cucumber crop and provide some privacy. The tomato plants on the other side of the greenhouse will give us a good crop and again, provide some privacy.

 

[disco survivor]

As well as the CBD pain relief grow experiment, I'm also growing Hungarian Blue Poppies and Wild Lettuce. I've grown Hungarian Blue for a few years and used the seeds in bread making. This will be the first time seeing if I can produce a pain relief product? Never grown wild lettuce before but I found it growing wild on an industrial estate so how hard can it be 

 

Not sure if the poppy and wild lettuce experiment would be of any interest to anyone and warrant a separate topic post in the gardening section of the forum?

[Lubdub]

Really digging it all, man. Will be following 

[disco survivor]

Quick question that I can't seem to find the answer to:

I'm treating this first grow as a bit of an experiment and hopefully learn a lot from. The entire grow will be run along the lines of my tomato and cucumber grows with much of the same tools, growing medium and techniques. 

Currently, in order to regulate the pH, I use a few drops of fresh lemon juice in the water to increase the acidity and wood ash to increase the Alkaline level. I know wood ash is suitable for cannabis but not sure about lemon juice. I'm 99% sure it's OK but just wanted to check first. I'll never buy off the shelf products.

 

Thanks in advance.

[MindSoup]

You don't need to worry about ph at all in compost, it has buffers added for that.

[disco survivor]

 

Getting some good growth on the plants. The images show the change over a 48 hr period. I'm on day 14 of the grow (from the date the seeds were placed into the sandwich bag for germination). 

The £6 Wilko ground meters are doing an excellent job, especially as a water saturation guide (they measure pH, light and water saturation). I used these when I first started to grow cucumbers and melons (both extremely sensitive to over/ under watering).