Hello Everyone,
Eighteen days ago I planted some cannabis seeds and was feeling optimistic that everything would go perfect.
I was even a bit overconfident because I generally have a very high germination rate with seeds.
This is probably because I am very picky about which seeds I keep from cannabis. I prefer to only keep mature seeds that can pass the futuremind squeeze test, it's gentle but firm.
I can usually tell just by looking at a seed if it's going to crack under my stress test, and visually a immature seed will be more green in color than a brownish seed with stripes running through it.
All of the seeds I planted were seeds that I picked, so I was shocked when only 2 out of 12 popped.
I need four in the tent at the very least, and prefer to have at least six, expecting at least two or three of them will always turn out male, leaving me enough room to properly flower the remaining plants.
Of the two that popped, I'm quite sure one is an Indica, and is the one with the short stout thicker leaves. The other one I have no idea if it's Indica or Sativa, but its taller and not as attractive to me, even though I prefer Sativa, and the taller one might be Sativa.
Despite only two of them popping, they are both vibrantly healthy and there are no bugs in the tent.
So let's go ahead and grab the special box that I keep my seeds in, and start another batch.
I really love my special little box. It kind of looks like a treasure chest almost :D
Beside the box on a towel, are some 3D printed seed starters that pop into a tray. They are very convenient and I love the colors of them too. I gave them a quick rinse to wash out the old residual soil, but not perfectly clean because we're just putting some more soil in them anyway.
Let's grab some seeds.
This is my best bag of seeds, so I'll pick 12 mature seeds from this bag.
Here we can see how convenient these little hexagon starter pots are. After filling them with the growing medium, I'll begin wetting with a spray bottle. (Before adding the seeds.)
This time around I took special care to get the more fine compound in the pots, avoiding sticks and large clumps.
I never put them very deep, and in these hexagon pots, I think this is proper because the tap root needs a little room for growth before transplanting, which is not long after sprouting, because the tap root on cannabis grows extremely fast and will become bound up if immediate transplant does not occur within a day or two.
I like to saturate the soil nicely, and do not add holes to the pots for this reason. Less volume with the heat of the tent, makes it unnecessary, because even when saturated, they will dry quickly and need daily watering. Saturation I find to be better for the unpopped seeds anyway. The saturation process is very slow and meticulous with a spray bottle, because it's easy to add too much saturation and then both the soil and seed is suspended in water.
These lamps are absolutely amazing for the price. Less than 20 dollars on Amazon. They are heavy duty with really nice heatsinks that work good. I've been running one of them for close to a year now with no issues at all. I expect the new one will also perform well, and increase my yield to at least double. Maybe even more than double, because we're working with a small area, and the lumens are now greatly increased with this addition.
Altogether I probably pulled close to an ounce with my last harvest. The next I think I will get at least 1-2 ounces of dried and cured cannabis. We'll just have to see what happens!
Now we're all set up with another 12 seeds. I imagine we will do better than 2 pops on this round.
I keep that fan facing away, because direct airflow on the plants would be too intense and likely cause some issues. I'm not sure what kind of issues because I've always known to never keep intense direct airflow on the plants, but maybe they would just die.
I'm running a small USB inlet fan, because without it the plants would surely die from the intense heat that will be present in this tent if closed with no ventilation. Those lights produce some heat. It's not anything comparable to HPS lights or anything, but is still substantial if not ventilated. How much? I'm not sure. I should get a thermometer, but I'm willing to bet it reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit / 37.7 Celsius without ventilation. (Might even be wise to add an outlet fan.) Smell is not an issue since it's legal here now and I live near a bunch of stoner girls :D
The three black plugs are the lights, and the other two are the fans in that power strip. The thing in the front of the outlet strip is a timer, grandma would be seriously scolding me for leaving it plugged in if she was still around, but I don't wanna reset it and I doubt it's drawing very much electricity anyway :D
All zipped up and maximizing light efficiency now. It still gets a little warm in there even with the inlet fan, and this will be good for the seeds, because seedlings like a warm soil. Some people even use heating pads to warm their seeds. (On top of the tent are stackable 3D printed containers that come in handy big time for raising/lowering plants)
I'm looking forward to (hopefully) seeing better results this time. It's going to be a tricky round with two plants being 18 days ahead, but this is just how it goes sometimes. I might have to utilize some training on the plants to manipulate the growth a bit. I'm not sure just yet what I'm going to do. I like to bush them out, but that could be problematic in this small area for this round. I might try my spiral pin down method and keep a single stalk. It looks wildly cool to me, when the stalk is growing in a spiral, and maximizes space with no harm to the plant.
This will do it for the cannabis garden update. I still haven't transplanted the succulents due to being extremely busy on a major 3D printing project, but luckily the succulents are doing really well anyway! More to come on that in the future :)
Thanks everyone for the amazing support and engagement. You all make my experience here a great one.
