Indoor Off to Seed the Wizard

[parsing_trees]

I've got a new batch of autos going:

• 4x Wizard's Apprentice regs (Night Owl)
• 2/4x Wild Thailand Ryder (World of Seeds)
• 2x Walter White (Mephisto)
• 1x Mango Smile (Mephisto)
• 1x BB#3 (Night Owl / Dark Horse collab)

I've tried to grow most those before but ran into problems -- I had a few WAs seedlings die from damping-off, and WTR and WW seeds that germinated but didn't sprout. I narrowly picked HubbabubbaHaze over Mango Smile before (no regrets, I love HBH), but have been wanting to grow MS for a while too. The WA regs may not be the best pairing with the others, but those seeds are a couple years old, and I want to reproduce them while I still can. I'll make some other crosses along the way, both with WA pollen and some other pollen in my freezer.

Everything except the WTRs sprouted about a week ago. Neither of the first two WTRs sprouted (again! ), but after a couple days I got two more soaking, and those sprouted this morning. That's a lot of seedlings for a 2x2, but I started two WWs and two WTRs as insurance. Depending on how many of the WA regs are male, I will probably cull a few of the weakest before it gets too crowded, flowering six or so females total. At the moment, WW1 is currently the least vigorous of the bunch, but the strain description specifically mentions that WW can start slow and then rapidly catch up later, so we'll see. (Also, that's a lot of 'W's...and an 'M' and a '3'.) WA4 was previously in the front-left corner and was stretching a bit too much, so I added support until the stem bulks up more.

This grow has the same general setup as my last two journals (Heavy Metal Ice Cream, 60x60 cm: Solos, Sativas, Seedmaking), and I decided to use the plastic ice cream containers again. They cleaned up pretty easily, and I sanitized everything plastic by soaking in a bucket with diluted bleach water.

I currently have a 3500K autoCOB and a 5000K OpticLED COB in my tent (both ~55W), rather than two 3500K autoCOBs. Might switch later, might not.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to use 24/0 or 20/4 lighting this grow. I tend to use 24/0 in the fall/winter, to help keep my tent warmer, but I prefer to keep my lights a few inches higher in 24/0 than 20/4, reducing intensity to keep the DLI around the same place. Some of the strains in this batch might get pretty tall (even in tiny containers), so I might use 20/4 for a little extra headroom. At the moment, the lights are on a timer set to 20/4 (off noon - 4 pm), but with the switch overriding the timer to always on, extra warmth for the seedlings.

 

[parsing_trees]

Day 9. It's only been a few days, but they're growing fast. Most have started on their third node. If I lift up the cups I can see a few roots down at the hydroton, so I will transition to bottom-feeding soon.

The blue plant markers are for fem seeds, the white plant markers are the regs.

WTR3 hasn't grown much since sprouting. I don't know what happened there (any ideas?), but WTR4 is doing fine, so unless something changes soon I will probably just cull WTR3. WTR4 sprouted six days later than everything else, but looks like they did on day three, and in a few weeks it won't make much difference.

 

[JP1]

 

[Franklin Sinatra]

Im pulling up a chair. Got an auto seed run going myself with a few fems and mostly regs. Lovely garden you've got growmie, I love looking at baby plants.

 

[parsing_trees]

Im pulling up a chair. Got an auto seed run going myself with a few fems and mostly regs. Lovely garden you've got growmie, I love looking at baby plants.

Thanks. I don't usually post much until this point, because posts about seedlings seem pretty boring to me, and I figure nobody wants to hear me anxiously whining about waiting for seeds to sprout. At this point, the grow details are mostly set; I don't do a perpetual setup, so I'm not going to keep soaking more seeds after a week in.

Have you seen my other posts about the whole pollen isolation bin setup? It's really nice if you're growing regs and want to do some pollen chucking on the side, without messing with multiple tents and whatnot.

 

[Franklin Sinatra]

Thanks. I don't usually post much until this point, because posts about seedlings seem pretty boring to me, and I figure nobody wants to hear me anxiously whining about waiting for seeds to sprout. At this point, the grow details are mostly set; I don't do a perpetual setup, so I'm not going to keep soaking more seeds after a week in.

Have you seen my other posts about the whole pollen isolation bin setup? It's really nice if you're growing regs and want to do some pollen chucking on the side, without messing with multiple tents and whatnot.

Cheers man I'll check it out. Its nice when the work is all set into place and you are just following the plan, love it when a grow goes smoothly like that. Right now I'm just doing an open pollination so I don't need the bin per say, but sounds interesting for the future. Happy growin m8

 

[parsing_trees]

Day 13. Bottom-feeding is going well. For a couple days now I've dumped water in each windowbox in the morning, and by sometime in the middle of the night it's all been absorbed. I can see a few roots growing out of the bottom of the cups. I'm still top-watering WTR4 a little bit, but its roots should reach the bottom soon too.

WTR3 never grew any further, so I culled it a few days ago.

I also removed my timer, I've been on 24/0 so far and decided to stick with that unless I run out of vertical space and need to reduce light intensity.

Several of the plants are working on their fourth nodes now, most will probably get topped in the next week. The WA regs will probably start showing sex in a week or so, too. Hoping for two males and two females.

 

[tronN00dles]

Looking good!

 

[parsing_trees]

Day 16. I topped most of the plants this morning (WW2, BB#3, MS, WA2, WA3, WA4), though with the WW2 I probably should have waited a day or two to get a clearer shot -- I probably FIM'd it instead, oops.

WW1 and WA1 will get topped in a few days, and WTR4 is about a week behind. The leaves on WTR4's first node looked pretty straggly, but the second and third nodes are looking better. Probably nothing to worry about.

I checked the WA regs closely with a loupe and found tiny stigmas forming on WA3 and WA4, so those are female. Nothing visible on WA1 or WA2 yet. I'm hoping at least one of those will be male, ideally both.

I also added supports to most of them -- a couple stretched/grew at an angle as seedlings and could use a bit of extra reinforcement to take pressure off where the stem breaks ground. They will stretch much taller than the plastic chopsticks once they start flowering, but should still be able to get a bit of support for the main stem, and the silica should help them to bulk up and support themselves better.

 

[parsing_trees]

Day 20. As of last night, all four of the Wizard's Apprentice regs have shown sex...and all four are female.

I only planned on keeping two female WAs, and I'm trying to make more seeds with them, so I decided to reverse the two that just started to show sex yesterday with STS. That's a big change in direction -- if that had been my plan from the beginning, I would have started them weeks before the others -- but hopefully I will be able to collect pollen from at least one of them in time to get mature seeds without pushing everything well past harvest. This batch is going to run long anyway because of the Mango Smile, so there could be time. If that doesn't work out either, well, I've still got frozen pollen from males in past batches.

Next time I grow regs, I will probably start five or six to improve the odds. I've done this a couple times before, starting three or four regs, and got one or two males each time, but there's 1:8 odds of getting FFFF or MMMM with four regs (1:16 for each individual outcome), so it was bound to happen eventually. I have two more WA regs and a couple F5 fems to try again later, but unless I really love the WA flower I have other strains I'd rather grow first.

Full tent, before moving two of the WAs to the isolation bin. Some huge fan leaves on the Walter Whites, front/right.

Here are the two reversal candidates in the isolation bin. I am hoping that since they just barely started to show sex yesterday (I found a stigma on each with a loupe) they aren't too far along and reversal can go smoothly. I sprayed them with 3 mM STS shortly after. For STS details, look at this grow journal by Proph and this journal article. I've used STS for a few reversals, but I'm far from an expert with STS; if I was I probably wouldn't have messed up the first batch mixing the B into the A and rapidly oxidizing it (whoops), rather than slowly introducing the A into the B. In any case, I'm going to spray WA1 and WA2 once a week and hopefully at least one of them will reverse and start producing viable pollen within the next 3-4 weeks.

With WA1 and WA2 moved into the bin, the other plants have a bit more elbow room. I moved one of the WWs to the left tray. I may eventually need to cull one of the WWs for space, but I'm going to postpone that decision as long as I can. There's more room next to the smaller WTR, which is doing well and should be ready to top within a few days.

Speaking of topping, the WA4 responded to it really well -- all the side branches have perked up, and there also two mains forming. The WA4 is showing some magnesium deficiency, but I've been gradually increasing my base nutrients, which contain magnesium. If the new growth continues to show Mg def I can mix in a little epsom salts.

I'm using my somewhat hard tap water (~350 us/cm EC) and Dyna-Gro nutrients: 1/2 tsp Pro-Tekt and 1 tsp Foliage-Pro per gallon, for a total EC around 1220 us/cm. The Pro-Tekt raises the pH significantly, so I added about 0.75 ml pH Down to get to around 5.9 - 6.0. I've been gradually ramping up the amount of Foliage-Pro, but will probably stay around this EC until I switch to at least partial flowering nutrients (Bloom). The Bloom is more acidic, so I can find a balance between the Pro-Tekt and Bloom (or FP + Bloom) that lands right at 5.9, which makes mixing the nutrients really convenient.