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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Day 23.

I took everything out and checked them for any issues. No signs of herming or anything like that. Everything except the WTR4 (6 days younger) has shown sex. Most of them are getting pretty branchy now, post topping, and have started to switch to alternate phyllotaxy for new growth.

Time lapse of the last two weeks, with one frame per day to keep the file size down.

I took out the WTR4 to top it above the fourth node, but apparently it topped itself over the last couple days -- the main stem forked and there are two fifth nodes growing out of it already. I may leave it, I may supercrop it to bend the main stem down, but decided to stop and think about it. It's got a pretty thick main stem already, so if I'm going to bend it I should probably do so soon. It looks like I'm going to need to do something to manage its height.

The Mango Smile is clawing a bit, probably telling me that it doesn't want nitrogen to increase further. The current veg nutrient EC is as high as I will probably go, but I'm giving the same mix to all the plants, and the WAs and BB#3 look like they wouldn't mind more. It is what it is. Otherwise, the MS has a pretty much ideal branchy structure, and all its new growth has very thin leaflets.

I'm not going to cull anything yet, but the WW1 is still the least vigorous of the bunch. WW2 is doing great, and while I FIM'd it, the straggly cut has two mains growing out of it and it wound up with the sort of structure I wanted anyway. As the tent gets more crowded (particularly since I'm keeping the isolation bin in longer, for reversing), the WW1 may have to go, but I'll keep it if I can.

 

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Day 27. In the flowering stretch.

From above. WA4 (back-left) probably has some light stress on the big fan leaf, or maybe a magnesium deficiency? Not sure.

Another picture, parallel to the canopy. The tent is crowded but after stretching there's a decent amount of airflow.

It's hard to see when it's in the tent, but the MS has a very branchy, spread out structure. I'm mostly able to fit its branches in between the other plants' branches, but the lower branch on the right got pinched between the side of the tray and the isolation bin for a little bit.

In marked contrast, I haven't even topped the WTR4, because the main stem split into two tops above the fourth node on its own. There isn't much growth on the lower branches because of the mains' auxin, but the tops should be able to hold their own finding canopy space amidst the other plants that are a week or so older. Hopefully some of the lower branches will develop enough to get a bunch of seeds off it.

I'd noticed that it had a very wide main stem, but hadn't made the connection between that and topping itself -- it'd actually started growing wider and wider after the first node because it was diverging into two stems.

WA3

WA4

The WA3 and WA4 are tall and branchy, but not as spread out. Both have lots of lower side branches to pollinate. Even if I don't get any fem WA pollen from the reversal attempt, I have Anvil pollen for making WA x Anvil regs.

 

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The flowering stretch is in full force now, and most of them are getting major pompoms.

Everything is taller, particularly the MS tops poking out in the back.

The WTR isn't as branchy, but its two self-topped mains are stretching, so after taking this picture I tied them further apart to spread out its wingspan in the canopy. Since the mains are bent lower, into a T shape, that might mess with auxin flow enough to get some extra growth in the middle. We'll see.

Overhead view. The BB#3 is darker green than the others, and the WTR4's ties are visible near the middle-left.

The BB#3 is growing pretty similarly to the WAs -- tall, branchy, responding well to topping.

The MS is the stretchiest of the bunch, with branches going every which way.

The WW1 and WW2 look pretty similar, with the broadest leaves, but WW1 has a more orderly structure from a clear topping, whereas WW2's FIM-ing led to a bit more varied branch growth.

The two WAs in the isolation bin haven't started to show any sign of reversing yet. (I started spraying them with STS 10 days ago.) They too have been stretching, so they've been trained and supercropped to keep them from pressing up against the top of the bin.

The one on the left seems to responding better to bottom-feeding, with lots of roots spreading out into the tub.

 

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Based on time-lapse, it looks like the flowering stretch is finishing up. Everything is about 18-20" (45-50 cm) tall except for the WTR4, which is a little shorter because I bent the split top stems to the side.

The WAs, MS, and BB#3 have lots of pompoms (big clusters of stigmas), the WWs and WTR4 aren't there yet but should in a week or so. I only have one tube left of Zamaldelica Express pollen, and I mainly want to put that on the WWs and WTR4, so that will have to wait until they're ready. I could do a pass with Anvil pollen on the WAs and BB#3 pretty much whenever, but will probably wait for the WWs.

I know it's got a long way to go, but I really like the structure on the MS. The tiny container has kept it manageable height for my setup, but it's got wide shoulders and looks like it should fill in a lot. It seems to have acclimated to the nitrogen levels, and it's starting to smell good too.

Bending the WTR4's two main stems down seems to have helped encourage growth in the middle. I'm hoping to get some small branches to pollinate there, the lower node 1-2 branches haven't developed much since I didn't top it.

 

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Day 37, first pollination.

They're all done stretching now except for the WWs, which are still going. I haven't noticed any signs of reversal from the WAs in the isolation bin yet.

I started pollinating today, following the process I described in this post.

I used Anvil pollen from my freezer, some from my previous batch, and also remaining Anvil pollen from about two years ago that seems to still be viable. I brushed a bunch on major side branches on the WAs and BB#3, and a small branch each on the others.

After bending the two main branches down, the WTR4 has grown a couple small branches with pistils at the top. That will mainly get the Zamaldelica Express pollen, but probably enough for a few seeds of other crosses too.

Every time I take the MS out I'm more excited.