Indoor Testing the eazyplug pyramid mini.

[The Iconoclast]

Very nice! Didn't realise you were growing Terp Treez. Genetics look strong. Whats your opinion?

I'm just about to flip 3 Terp Treez Zoap photos. But have been impressed so far.

Qb

They say that you can tell the best weed by putting two bowls in a room of weedsters, and the bowl that empties first is he best. Similarly BlueNerdz looks good and is as crusty as anything I've ever grown, but it's the only bean that I just keep on wanting to grow, there's something about it. The two TerpTreez I've grown Tre Lime Sorbet and Blue Nerdz, both have really nice subtle terpene profiles and are very resinous. So that's a wrap as far as I'm concerned. I do not think you will be disappointed.

 

[Qbgrower]

They say that you can tell the best weed by putting two bowls in a room of weedsters, and the bowl that empties first is he best. Similarly BlueNerdz looks good and is as crusty as anything I've ever grown, but it's the only bean that I just keep on wanting to grow, there's something about it. The two TerpTreez I've grown Tre Lime Sorbet and Blue Nerdz, both have really nice subtle terpene profiles and are very resinous. So that's a wrap as far as I'm concerned. I do not think you will be disappointed.

Great to hear. Thanks.

Qb

 

[The Iconoclast]

Very nice! Didn't realise you were growing Terp Treez. Genetics look strong. Whats your opinion?

I'm just about to flip 3 Terp Treez Zoap photos. But have been impressed so far.

Qb

Blue Nerdz is simply my favourite bean I've ever grown, it's just doesn't go wrong. Hydro, mini pyramid big pyramid, and now my latest hydro I snapped the main stem like a carrot at three weeks, just hanging on by a thread, I thought no way, so I just gently lifted it back into place to see what would happen, most of it died, but the main stem became one of the minor stems and two other stems became main stems and one of those sent off two shoots in a Y form, which I have never seen before, probably a reaction to the severe auxin interruptions. Doesn't look anything like my other Nerdz, but it's looking like she is going to do something special. This strain has all the qualities anyone would want in an auto, fast, nice flavour you don't get tired of it, very resiny, beautiful to look at and almost indestructible.

I got a couple of Tastbudz brand seeds, which I'm also pleased with not as consistent as TerpTreez but lots of resin and interesting flavour. Some of my favourite weed has been freebies from people I'd never heard off and after some very unhappy experience with short stuff gorilla cookies I resolved to try unknown (to me) or obscure brands, I have a some Double Seeds, on the way, looking forward to that.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Greetings to all fellow grower!

I am lovin' this 32in X 80in tent being long and narrow is turning out to be the perfect fit. So I've been working on ways to optimise my overall set up with my ultimate goal of doing the least amount of work and also it must be easy on the eye. I've gone back to the ease of my shallow water culture hydro with a full pot of expanded clay and external tank, basically it is no work at all to run. I just change the res once when they flip to flower, then I'll just top up with more nutes.

They pyramids are too much work and too expensive anyway but I wanted to become familiar with hand watering in case I ever need to set up a stripped down grow sometime. What I've learned is the big pyramid is pretty well foolproof, and cannot be overwatered. The small pyramid requires a bit more attention.

However, I thought that because I can grow for two weeks in the small pyramids that if I started them two weeks before my current grow was finished then that would shave two weeks off my time, and even better it would eliminate that very slow two week period where not much happens. Shaving two weeks off would be worth the cost of a mini pyramid. So that's what I did with my newly arrived Double Seeds beans.

After getting good results from Terp Treez and Taste Budz, I went for another unknown (to me), Double Seeds, because they are double the amount and I'm always looking for a bargain. The one on the left is Blackberry Gum, although it doesn't look like a blackberry strain although it is supposed to have some blue tints in the flowers so we shall see. The one on the right is a Northern Lights, but it's not looking how I envisaged, but she is looking chunky.

Both these were chosen for their fast flowering times and they have not disappointed, in fact they were showing preflowers at two weeks, so for the first time I may have stunted my NL a bit, because the Blackberry Gum has overtaken her. latest updates coming soon.

 

[The Iconoclast]

After planting I realised that i have made a bit of an error by using my new Double Seeds strains because I have nothing to compare them to because It's a first test of the mini pyramid buried in a hydro. At the moment they are both running on an external 30L tank which is handy.

Digging into the clay balls I can see that the roots are growing out well, however these plugs were outside getting air pruned for two weeks so that needed some more thinking. Both these are at 7 weeks tomorrow and although they were looking a little small and spindly three weeks ago, they are looking very heavily populated with fat trichomes.

Northern Lights on the right looks like she'll be ready in two weeks and the Blackberry Gum maybe three weeks so with that in mind I had to start thinking about what i was going to do because this looks like it will be a little light on the harvest. But it is flowering fast so bearing that in mind I thought I'd grow another NL straight away without the pyramid as a comparison.

 

[The Iconoclast]

But after some more thinking and being inspired by Little-Leopards results I thought that I could bury the pyramid straight away, so because I have already tested the Blue Nerdz in different ways, with a large pyramid and a small one, and normal hydro, so I thought I should do a buried pyramid with the Blue Nerdz, so that's what I've done.




Then I have just sprouted the new Northern Lights in a normal one inch eazyplug starter which is hooked up to a small bucket res.

The other Blue Nerdz sprout in a buried pyramid is not hooked up yet, as she can live like that for two weeks.

So now that I will be seeing if I want to use buried pyramids or not. That would depend on how the new blue nerdz goes.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Has it only been two years since I went on the eazy journey. Welp I have some new thinking, that reevaluates some old results. Long story short I actually blamed bad beans on the eazy pyramids when now I understand how regularly do autos throw up bad beans. I tried to ditch my hydro for all eazyplug mini pyramids, then I went back to hydro in a tent and a smaller space, which is where I was with the Double Seeds Blackberry Gum and Northern Lights.

However I have come to a place now where I am retiring my hydro permanently and moving to single strain grows using 3 large eazy pyramids at a time, and a random assortment of smaller back up mini pyramids. What follows is the story to how I got here. First an update on the Double Seeds buried after two weeks in my hydro.

The final result of the buried pyramids, was a normal grow. They did not drown so this is a way to shave two weeks. Would be cool to see how a buried pyramid works in soil. So far this year we have had 4 days free of rain up to the end of the Buried Pyramids. 100% humidity outside most of the time and blazing hot temps, 28C at nights, and up to 40C in the days, as a result the two hydro that were going to follow the Double Seeds, keeled over and passed on to seedling heaven. Ergo I've been out of weed for a few weeks, soon to be rectified.

So lets first have a look at how the Double Seeds Blackberry Gum and Northern Lights ended up considering they were finished about 8 and 9 weeks but I could not harvest because it was so humid and the extreme heat meant that I could not use a dehumidifier. I made a decision to leave them growing for an extra week or two hoping for the weather to change, which is did not.


The DoubleSeeds N.L and Blackberry Gum, both flowered when the weather was hot and humid. 90% humidity through the whole flowering. Northern Lights was very fast but then suddenly Blackberry Gum shot up and took over. N.L had the type of bud and stem that is prone to bud rot, and they probably both could have been harvested at 8 weeks but I was afraid to hang them in a sauna, I thought they'd be better off alive on the plant but by 10 weeks and no letup in the crazy weather I had no choice the weather was not going to ease up.


I lost 1/3 of the N.L to bud rot, not too bad under the circumstances, but Blackberry Gum powered through like a champion, and it was also possibly my frostiest bean yet, she dried fast enough that when the crystals set it was like a rock. Fast and crusty, the kind men like. Even during the punishing weather.

Here is N.L of which I lost 1/3, quite a pretty plant, and one that I will grow in a mini pyramid but not a large pyramid, I'm saving them for beans that I know have some stability.




Here is the final buds of the Double Seeds Blackberry Gum auto. Notice no blackberry colours at al, but some blue in the leaves. This is an incredibly crusty plant, and extremely hardy, was not affected by stupid humidity, all leaves remained pretty well good till the end, and very fast however there are two quite different phenotypes for the Blackberry gum which I did not know at the time but more on that later.

 

[The Iconoclast]

I've always gone for variety, but I've had a few of of the small pyramids turn out some really shite results, including 5 FB Gorilla Cookies, stunted and twisty I think one was OK. However I had a bit of an epiphany since then. At the time I blamed it on me maybe going a bit too gung ho with the watering. This didn't really makes sense considering I've done plenty where I've just dipped the whole plant in the nutes from about three weeks, and it was why I was worried about burying the pyramids, I still think it's better to keep the small pyramids not fully soaked for the first few weeks to encourage the finest of the fine root hairs to be able to live. After the pyramids handled it well I gradually came to the realisation after 6 years of autos that all the rubbish pyramids were not me but the beans themselves. Then I realise I was being jerked around by the autos.



I went back through my past grows and I have understood that there are three types of bad bean. There is the one with excessively curly leaves, this is not that common and usually grows out to some extent but it's alway behind the eight ball. There there is the one with very twisted leaves that begin from an early age and are very ugly fortunately not that common. But the most common bad bean is the one that is stunted at an early age. Below is a twisted G.C by F.B. These cannot be topped and they usually produce an oz if I'm lucky. But I'll never grow one of these to finish again, they will be disposed of no later than day 10 to 12 harsh, I know, but fair, certainly well before the two week mark.

The one that I have to be careful of is what I refer to as the standard stunted, it may also be twisted POS as well but the standard stunted reveals itself by being a bit small when compared to it's brethren, but is more easily identified by the first and second pairs of true leaves bunching up on each other. Again I've grown these out and it's a waste of time.




To confirm my suspicions, I decided to do from here on in, only single strain grows to check. I was very impressed with both the speed, the resiliency and the quality of the Blackberry Gum, see previous post. So I planted 5 x Double Seeds Blackberry Gum in three hydro pots. I've grown two and one time three seeds in a pot so I knew I could handle it. As it turned out it realised my epiphany and the blinding light of truth. Of the 5 beans, two were normal, two were stunted, and one was double sized.

As this was still an unknown strain and was also cheap because you get double the amount of seeds I was happy to plant 5 to grow three. Stunted seeds do not reveal themselves in the first week. As I was later to discover, the Blackberry Gum have two distinct phenotypes, short and tall. You could easily mistake them for two different plants.




So here they are at two days old all looking normal. Two beans in the far left pot, two in the middle and one on the right. I did have a bit of luck the way that particular beans were planted together.



One week old nothing suspicious yet, maybe in hindsight. Bean two and three were stunted


more to follow... where things take an interesting turn of events

 

[The Iconoclast]

Below are all five beans on Day 10 and it is very clear that bean no. 2 and bean no. 3 are stunted. Bean 2 had a stem like a piece of cotton and that one was pulled up and thrown in the bin the next day




You can see what I mean by the two pairs of true leaves parked on top of each other, as well as being obviously small. I should mention at this stage that all three hydro pots are using the same reservoir.





From here on in things get very interesting, at this stage I do not know there are two phenotypes, and the other stunted bean was in the middle pot with a non stunted bean, because the stem was not as weak as the one in the first pot I decided to let the second stunted one grow out because why not. Had it been in a pot of its own I'd have been pissed. But I have outsmarted these autos. This turned out later to be quite amazing because although it was stunted, it was also one of the big phenotypes, and how a stunted bean that is also a big phenotype responds was very surprising.

So the left pot had one normal looking bean, the middle pot had one stunted and one normal but slightly large, and the right pot also had a normal looking bean. Because the far left bean and the far right bean looked extremely similar. I decided to do a further mini test where the far left bean was topped and the far right bean was bended over.

With the middle pot, the stunted bean was left to grow out and the large bean was also topped.

So here is the bended bean on the far right.





And here is the topped matching bean on the far left...

 

[The Iconoclast]

I promise you this will all be worth it....

so here is an overall look, it's already apparent that the middle bean is a different phenotype. But by week 4 its explosive growth has manifested. I expected the stunted bean to disappear, I made it curve out of the way and it stayed small doing nothing for a while, it was only later that I realised that the stunted bean in the middle pot was also a large phenotype and it took off, but because it was stunted by the time it took off it was basically just like a single branch of the large one next to it. And even though it's ended up forming the most resiny buds, there was not much of it. Again I reiterate that I just do not want to have low producing beans in their own pots. So it just goes to show that even a large phenotype if stunted will still be a poor producer. So one main branch on the stunted large phenotype and five main branches on the normal large phenotype. So the stunted bean only produced 20% of what it should. Sounds about right.




The stunted bean in the middle pot eventually got its footing and grew rapidly, but it was too late to make use of it's fast growth. Here we are at six weeks. The left pot was topped as well as the monster in the middle, the left one grew an inch in six days after topping and the middle one grew 4 inches in that same time. This has been a real eye opener.




And here we are today, it seems that as I suspected topping is better than bending them over. Also the topped bean on the left is a bit further advanced, both look like they'll still be very resinous.

Below in the first shot, the bud on the left is the stunted large phenotype.



So this has shown me the variation that I have to deal with, and if the beans are cheap I can do that. However I have gradually come to reappreciate the EazyPlug large pyramids, especially given the amount of work it takes to keep the hydro in peak condition which I have been a bit slack over consequently I'm not getting as good a root mass as I used to. So faced with a very heavy duty sterilisation, and the understanding that I got some bad beans and blamed the pyramids. Coupled with some very good results in the large pyramid...

I have decided that this is my final hydro. I am completely eliminating hydro from my life and I will replace the three main grows in my new 5 foot by 2.5 foot tent with 3 Large Eazyplug Pyramids, I can't remember if I posted this shot before but here is a Blue Nerdz done in a large pyramid...



So not only am I going all in on the Large Pyramids but I am also doing single strain grows, and using the small pyramids for variety. It seemed expensive at first considering that the hydro doesn't cost me anything but when i factor in the time and effort, then in fact the Eazyplug Large Pyramids are a no brainer for me now.

I gave up on F.B after the Gorilla Cookies fiasco. But I have decided to give them another go as a single strain grow in 3 big pyramids and I have chosen F.B Banana Purple Punch seeing as it is supposed to be fairly stabilised, so lets put it to the test. I only have three beans because they are a lot more expensive than what i usually want to pay so there had better be no stunted plants or weirdos. And if there are because I'm in the pyramids, I will know for certain that it is the beans and not me.

So I will be starting these a few weeks after the Double Seeds Blackberry Gum hydro are finished in two or three weeks.

In the meantime though I planted a pair to Expert Seeds Green Crack auto. And lo and behold one of them was a POS. it wasn't stunted it was one of those rare mutated weirdos. And in keeping with my new resolve to not grow out bad beans, I threw the bad one away and I'm glad I did because the other one is excellent

You can see the first three shots are mutated which I threw out at day 11. and the final two shots are the good bean.