1st journal-Sensi Star/LA Ultra/NYC Diesel

[SensiStarFan]

Diesels are @ Day #16. Getting hairy tops
-SSF-

 

[Rosebud]

Now it begins...yum.

 

[SensiStarFan]

Not much to report on the plants today. But I did pick up a new bong

I retired my old one. It (Miss Cleo) had served me well for years but it was time for something new. I need to come with a name for him/her. This is also my first bong that has a glass on glass slide instead of a rubber seal and I love it. I looked at a couple of Roar bongs but they were 2 or 3 times the price for the same size and features. I ended up getting this one for $100.

-SSF-

 

[MosesPMG]

:aok: nice! I just recently purchased my first glass-on-glass water pipe as well.
they are soo much smoother. congrats!

 

[nova564t]

I really dig that ice chamber.

 

[SensiStarFan]

Thanks Moses and nova, I am loving it!

-SSF-

 

[SensiStarFan]

The two Diesels are @Day #18. They were really dry when I checked on them today and I think that is causing the taco shaping of the leaves at the top (pic on far right). I took these pics before watering, hopefully they perk up. The 2 LA Ultra's and the two Sensi Stars are @Day #4 of flowering.
-Have a good day growing everyone!

-SSF

 

[MosesPMG]

looks great Sensi :aok:

 

[SensiStarFan]

So I haven't been keeping up with telling you all about the males. The one LA Ultra I found to be male while in veg I went ahead and started flowering 14 days ago, a few days after I started the Diesels. The one Hashberry I started flowering on 2/19 I am almost positive is male so it is in with the LA Ultra. These two male plants are flowering under 3 25 watt CLF's. When I went to check them today to see if they needed water I noticed the LA Ultra is starting to drop pollen. So I snapped some pics of it to add to the journal.
(EDIT: I forgot to mention that the males are kept in a closet with no ventilation at all or airflow. Flowering under three 25 watt cfl's does not make them get hot. They stretch a ton from so little light but do fine with no air movement and this way pollen isn't blown all over the place.)

Pretty much what I do is just shake the stem where the flower is dropping pollen and hold a small white piece of paper underneath. I pulled off the flower that was dropping pollen after I shook the pollen from it to show you guys how much I got from one flower. In the last pic the round object at the bottom of the pic is my fingernail in the picture just to try and give an idea of how small the pollen grains are. Once I get about 4 or 5 times this much pollen I will take the piece of paper and dump the pollen into an empty and COMPLETELY DRY prescription medicine bottle and store it in a dry dark place with my seeds. I have no idea how long it will keep like this and I have only done this once before but the time I collected pollen and stored it this way I was still able to use it to make seeds about 6 months later.

-SSF-

 

[SensiStarFan]

looks great Sensi :aok:

Thanks Moses

 

[Rosebud]

Very interesting, thanks SSF.

 

[SensiStarFan]

Very interesting, thanks SSF.

Thanks Rosebud. I decided I might as well try to do a little crossing now while the pollen is fresh. I am going to collect the pollen from the LA Ultra male I have then do a little painting on of pollen on the girls. I will label each branch/bud area that I paint pollen on with a little tag. So if all goes right I will be able to cross:
LA Ultra male (x) Sensi Star Female
LA Ultra male (x) Diesel Female

I will get started on this tomorrow and throw up some pics. Gotta be careful not to get pollen everywhere so I will do all of the pollen painting outdoors

-SSF-

 

[SensiStarFan]

I snuck into the flowering closet about an hour after the lights went off tonight and snapped a couple shots of the Sensi Stars while they sleep. They just finished day #6 of flower and are looking sexy I see heads popping up everywhere getting ready to form colas


-SSF-

 

[Cali*Style]

Wow Sensi, they are lookin awesome!! Whole lotta MOJO your way.

One thing to maybe think about though, especially if you are planning on pollinating with different males... Any breeze at all will spread pollen like the plague, and it can fly for miles and miles.

Happy growing!! Cali

 

[Rosebud]

It is amazing to me who quick they change from veg to flower mode..it is so fast.

 

[SensiStarFan]

Wow Sensi, they are lookin awesome!! Whole lotta MOJO your way.

One thing to maybe think about though, especially if you are planning on pollinating with different males... Any breeze at all will spread pollen like the plague, and it can fly for miles and miles.

Happy growing!! Cali

Hi Cali*Style thanks for checking out the journal. Yea I have to be careful with the pollen. I have a very small walled in patio that gets some great sunlight almost year round for 3-4 hours a day and I get my girls out there whenever possible. I plan on doing the pollen painting out there and letting the girls I paint sit for a few hours. Then I will take a fan and set it up out there to blow anything extra off of them. Then I will take a hose and spray down the patio. I would hate for any stray pollen to not only infect my flowering area but to get loose and pollinate some random person's plants a mile away. Again thanks for checking out the journal and the tips on the pollen. I have only tried crossing once so any tips are appreciated.

-SSF-

 

[Moto-Man]

I snuck into the flowering closet about an hour after the lights went off tonight and snapped a couple shots of the Sensi Stars while they sleep. They just finished day #6 of flower and are looking sexy I see heads popping up everywhere getting ready to form colas
-SSF-

Very cool stuff, great experimentation, g'luck w/ the pollination too! Plants are looking lovely. I'll post my Larry OG pics soon (still young 'uns now).

I like yer style, SSF.

 

[SensiStarFan]

Very cool stuff, great experimentation, g'luck w/ the pollination too! Plants are looking lovely. I'll post my Larry OG pics soon (still young 'uns now).

I like yer style, SSF.

Thanks Moto-man. "I like yer style too dude". Even though I am going to try these crosses I am still looking at seeds on attitude. I can't seem to ignore the promo starting in a couple hours.

-SSF-

 

[SensiStarFan]

So first off the bad news. There was still one plant in the flowering closet whose sex was still unknown, the 3rd LA Ultra grown from seed. Today I was able to determine positively that it is a male and it got the chop since I already have another male dropping pollen. This means the total number of plants for the rest of the journal will be 5 The good news is all 5 of these plants are monsters and filling the smaller 4 foot by 6.5 foot area they are in nicely.

The first pic is the LA Ultra that showed male and was removed. The second pic shows the flowering area with the plants rearranged into an X-pattern. Under each light is a Sensi Star and a NYC Diesel, and the giant LA Ultra is sitting in the middle.


I also began an attempt at crossing today. I was as careful as I could be with the pollen. I collected pollen from the LA Ultra male shown above in the journal into a little prescription bottle. I then chopped up the male and trashed him, sealing the bag plus soil and throwing it in the trash. I then washed the pot the plant had been in and threw the clothes I was wearing when I took the pollen into the wash, took a shower and changed. Then once I was sure I was clean I went into the flowering area and grabbed one of the Diesel plants that is on day #20. I took her outside and painted pollen on her with a Q-tip and labled the bud I painted with some string and tape. I gave her a good watering, let her sit for an hour, and then brought her back in after blowing off the area of the plant I had painted pollen with a little fan. The pics hopefully explain what I did. The last pic is just to show the top of the plant at 20 days. Once the Sensi Star is another week along I will try doing the same thing to her with the LA Ultra pollen.



Have a great weekend growing everyone!
-SSF

 

[SensiStarFan]

Special thanks to Gixxerman, THG, and Hamster Lewis who recommended getting rid of the Hashberry plant. Even if I do think it is probably a male it would be a bad idea to breed with a plant that has shown anything remotely close to hermie characteristics. So the Hashberry was eliminated today with extreme prejudice (chopped up and thrown in a trash bag).

So far in my journal I have shown how I veg my plants, how I flower my plants, but not how I clone my plants (I did in another thread but want it here as well). I took some extra clones 15 days ago at the start of flower just to make sure I was going to have at least two surviving plants of all the seed plants I am growing. And today I get to brag because this is the first time that every single clone I took in the batch survived and threw roots, 13 for 13 Sorry to toot my own horn I'm just excited. It's been a long long time cloning to get a perfect batch.

So I wanted to share how I do my clones because it is a little different from most. To put it quick and simple: I take a cutting and immediately put it in a bowl of water with a few drops of H2O2 mixed in. Then I recut the stem under water and let it sit in the water a minute or two. In a bucket I will have been soaking my 1-inch rockwool cubes in a 5.8-6.0 ph nutrient solution. This is just 1ml each of GH grow-micro-bloom, 1 gallon of water, and a few drops of H2O2. In a clear plastic container I will layer the bottom of the container with 1 inch of soil. Then one at a time I will take a rockwool cube out of the nutrient solution, squeeze out the excess moisture, and take the tip of a pair of scissors and make the hole a little bigger. Then I grab a clone and rub the cut end in some Green Light Rooting Hormone powder and stick it into the rockwool until it is snug. Then I place the clone on top of the dirt in the plastic container and continue the process until I have taken all the clones I want. I label the front of the container with what strain is in what row, and then I fill the container with more dirt until the top of the rockwool of each cube is covered. I then take about 1-2 cups of the nutrient solution I soaked the rockwool in and gently pour it over the soil. I just want to wet the soil, not have any standing water in the bottom of the container. The entire container is then placed on the top shelf of my vegging closet and a 1 foot floro is placed (I'm guessing about 6-10 inches) above the container. The container is covered with a clear plastic cover that is larger than the container so air can still flow in and out just a little bit. After 7 days I will check the soil and the clones to see if more water is needed and if so I just add plain 6.5 ph water (this batch did). Then after roughly 12 days I will start to see roots showing through the bottom of the clear plastic container. After about 14-16 days once I am happy with the number of roots I am seeing on the bottom of the container I go ahead and GENTLY dig the clones out.

There are a couple reasons I do my clones in dirt this way. First off, I grow in dirt and not hydro so I don't care if the rockwool is covered in soil. 2nd, when I tried cloning with just clones placed in rockwool under a humidity dome I had problems with green (I guess algae) growing on the tops of the rockwool cubes that were exposed to light. Having them covered in soil prevents this. 3rd, I have killed many clones sitting in rockwool under a humidity dome from not keeping a close enough eye on how moist the rockwool is. By having the rockwool submerged in soil I find the rockwool stays more consistent and I do not have to keep nearly as close an eye on the clones.


-If anyone has any questions or ideas for improvement feel free to jump right in!

-SSF-