Yo yo!
Might as well start a grow journal to proudly display my failures.
I'll start off with the basics:
Soil-less mix of Canna coco, EWC, Perlite, Gaia Green 4-4-4, dolomite lime, humic and fulvic acids, micronized sulfur, and composted manure. Before flower that gets epsom salts, guano, fish bone meal, and more lime to prevent lockout and make sure they've got calcium. I primarily vape flower, so the AVB that's too dark to use for edibles just goes back in the soil mix.
IPM: The neem and Safer's foliars mentioned below and PFR-97. Keeping plants in VPD also plays a big role in preventing botrytis and PM.
3 Foliar Sprays:
-Safer's Insecticidal Soap (50mL/L)with 100mL vegetable glycerin added for consistency
-Emulsified neem, lacto-fermented garlic, habanero seed, peppercorns, glycerin, clove oil, and water
-Epsom salts and micronized sulfur with 50ml/L glycerin
I've found that glycerin helps the foliar sprays stick to the leaves more, so I have to spray less for effective coverage. Would recommed.
That being said, one of the biggest things that I do differently is a three stage rinse to every plant that gets chopped. Even without spraying in flower, I don't see buds as being significantly different than fan blades in terms of collecting dust.
The first is water with baking soda and white vinegar at roughly room temp, the second rinse is warm water (110 degrees F or so), the third rinse is ice water. Just a second or two in each. The first gets off physical contaminants because of the CO2 bubbles created by the reaction (similar to an H2O2 rinse), the second weakens the cell walls of the leaves and increases chlorophyll degradation, and the third makes sure that they don't degrade too far. Same basic concept as blanching vegetables. It decreases overall weight (idgaf because I don't sell anything), but increases the ratio of good stuff to filler.
Space-wise, I have more than some but still not much.
2 flowering spaces holding about 45 plants (depending on pot size), with Kingbrite QB's (820w total) and a far red strip, also a cheap blurple
1 24 hour veg tent with a cheap blurple
1 12/12 tent for seedlings with a Spider Farmer 100w
All with remote temp/humidity sensors, obvs.
All reg seeds get started off under 12/12 until they start showing sex. The females then get topped and put in the 24 hour tent to further veg while the males get taken about 2/3 of the way through flower so I can get a feel for things like stretch, bud structure, yield, terps, etc. The keeper males get revegged in the 24 hour tent until their time to chuck pollen comes, then they go back under 12/12 for pollen collection.
I've few advantages to this. First, it's the fastest way that I've found to determine a plant's sex. Second, if a plant has any herm tendencies, they'll show themselves when initially flowering or revegging. Last, if the plant ends up being a shitty male or runt, the amount of time and effort wasted to keep them alive is minimal.
The biggest challenge that I'm dealing with is not having AC. For the most part I'm far enough north that it's not an issue, but that last heat wave has some plants looking rough. Everything is ventilated with outside air and the smell is neutralized with a carbon filter. The LED's create enough ambient heat that I never need to supplement it.
So yeah, I do a bunch of stuff differently. YMMV.
This is the second flowering tent, on the last day these plants will veg. G13 Hashplant in the back left corner, Bubba Hash is the huge indica in the center, Killer Colombian Lamb is to the far right in the middle. There are a couple of Orient Express, a Lemon Citron that got revegged (back middle), a few Ghanis, and a couple Silverfields. The empty spaces in there will be filled by Ghanis once the pots get here. There's still some obvious signs of heat damage, but they're recovering.
View attachment 74668
I'm gonna give the younger plants a few more days to bounce back from surviving the heat before showing them off. Right now they kinda look like they tried to steal a dragon's treasure.
