µTent Shared Bed Experiment

Hello folks, welcome to the second journal with this tent and the first with this new Veg bin.

To the µGrowers forum, thank you. Your reception and encouragement of the first journal was greatly appreciated. I hope this thread will be of value to someone's learning experience, as the first was to me. Let's dig on in.

Veg Specs
18 Gallon Tote Expandable Veg Bin
4x 23w Mixed Spectrum CFLs

Flower Specs
2.5'x1.5'x3' Flower Tent
PAR Spectrum Lighting
1x 80mm PC fan, 120mm PC fan, 4" Booster fan, DIY Carbon Filter - Intake/Exhaust
1x 6" Room Essentials fan, 8" AirKing - Circulation
26"x16"x6" 6 Gallon Shared Bed

Plants
4x BlackBerry - Bagseed
1x Madness - World of Seeds
5x Apollo - TGA Subcool

The BlackBerry have germinated and entered vegetative growth as of 2/1. They are currently in a soil mix of 2 Parts Baccto Professional, 1 Part EWC. MycoGrow was used to inoculate them upon potting.

The Apollo seeds arrived today along with the Madness freebie... anyone have experience with either strain? Is there any need-to-know information about these you'd be willing to share?

Sources for Further Reading
Teaming With Microbes
SoilFood Web Inc
Worms Eat My Garbage
Worming 101
Living Mulch
Organics for Beginners

More info will be posted throughout the day. Questions and Comments are welcome.

Just know I'm going to love watching this, good luck mate!

RRain said:

Just know I'm going to love watching this, good luck mate!

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Thank you RRain, always good to have you along.

Update and Pics on the way.

I'll be watching.

you gonna lst or fim or something?

you should for sure try what im trying in my small bin. keep the main stem horizontal in veg and let all the shoots grow up eventually for a canopy of maincola type buds.
It should go well for you as you have a large area spread of light so you could have a whole lot of em.

not only that it would look awesome as well. if i had my 400 and my 3x3 going i would be doing it for sure with maybe 4-6 plants

the veg will do good...you'll get ur plants to the right size no problem........ i'm happy how mine are going its working much better then I thought. Aside from the heat/filter issue I have, soon to be solved.

Updates will usually be on mondays but work has interfered. Here's the "week 1" update.

First of all, these BlackBerries are not all the same age. Two have a little less than week's head start and one really kicked off strong. For the purposes of this journal, however, they will be considered the same age. Also, in the OP it says they're "bagseed" and that's not entirely correct. Before the 2kw grow was disassembled, we grew out a couple BlackBerry clones from a local dispensary. The gentleman peddling these plants told us it was "Blackberry" and that his "boy got 8 O Zs off one of deez plants"... not likely. They were cheap so we purchased some anyway and ended up liking the way they grew, minus the semifrequent self-seeded hermie. 25 seeds were dropped into water and 4 successfully germinated, haha. By the time they're old enough, they might not be worth flowering... keeping fingers crossed.

2supra4u said:

I'll be watching.

you gonna lst or fim or something?

Click to expand...

It's good to have you along 2supra and yes, i'm glad you asked. LST ties were applied early last week; if they're kept small, the expansion for the bin will not be needed and neither will extra lights.

Be warned, they're ugly.









More to come.

Seeds from the attitude arrived today. By next week, the Madness seed will be germinated and running with the blackberry plants. The apollo will be saved for a run by itself as I would like to pollenate.





A "new" idea, at least to me, is the one of a Living Mulch. After reading Teaming With Microbes the benefit from increased biological activity at the surface of the soil became obvious. Soon after, I stumbled upon the "Living Mulch" thread posted in the OP. The idea is to expand the fungal network in the most aerated and biologically active part of the soil. Cover crops like Dutch White Clover have only small feeder roots and in using these, an organic mat-of-hyphae can be established.

From here, the jump to a "shared bed" was very small; if cannabis shares mychorrizal connections with other plants, why wouldn't it work with other kinds of cannabis? Since a container that fit inside the tent with maximum surface area and minimal height could not be found, one was constructed out of the supplies from the last grow's screen and landscape fabric... a DIY root-bed. It sits snugly inside the tent's removable bottom, so hydroton was added to the bottom of the bed for drainage.

so the experiment is using the one giant site for hydro...?

oh yes, another oTm project starts, loving it!!! good luck buddy. really looking forward to see the Apollo growing.

or for soil...? because i dont think i would use hydroton for drainage...it can sometimes absorb nutrients and then concentrate them over time...which can lead to all sorts of issues...even in all organic operations...not to mention you just won't be able to move the plants around and you can't let them veg long or they will use up all the space there I would think... but then again I am not totally sure what we are planning here.

The following soil mixture has been cooking for 45 days. It was used to fill the bed 2/3 full.

Base
~1.25 cu. ft ~ 3/4 Bag SA#4
1/2 cu. ft - 1 Bag Hoffman Vermiculite
1/2 cu. ft - 1 Bag Ancient Forest Humus


Nutritional Amendments (per 2 cubic feet)
4 Cups BuffaLoam Compost
3 Cups Oat flour
2 Cups Pulverized Garden Lime
2 Cups P Guano
1 Cup PlantTone
2/3 Cups Kelp
1/2 Cup AZOMITE

Since Clover's nutritional tolerances are still unknown, a fresh batch of soil was made to sit directly below the clover. 2Gal baccto professional, 1 Cup Oat flour, 1/2 cup black gold 5-5-5. Lime was left out to provide balanced acidity to the soil bed.

The living mulch thread recommends the clover should be applied in a biologically diverse medium. 1 TBS Seeds + 1 tsp MycoGrow + 2 TBS Oat Flour + 4 tsp EWC + 1 tsp Azomite, were mixed in a separate container and spread evenly across the soil's surface. These were watered in with a mister and plain Baccto professional was applied to the surface.








If/when the clover sprouts (~7-10 days) it will be trimmed and the Blackberry plants will be moved to Flowering.


- - -


These posts sum up Week 1 and the train of thought that went into this grow. As always, questions and comments are welcome. Thank you for reading!

avrum said:

oh yes, another oTm project starts, loving it!!! good luck buddy. really looking forward to see the Apollo growing.

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Haha. Thank you avrum, I'm glad you checked in.

I'm stoked about the Apollo too. However, I want to see what happens with the bed before puttin TGA genetics in there.

missnu said:

so the experiment is using the one giant site for hydro...?

Click to expand...

missnu said:

or for soil...? because i dont think i would use hydroton for drainage...it can sometimes absorb nutrients and then concentrate them over time...which can lead to all sorts of issues...even in all organic operations...not to mention you just won't be able to move the plants around and you can't let them veg long or they will use up all the space there I would think... but then again I am not totally sure what we are planning here.

Click to expand...

Soil. Did my last post clear a few things up?

The reason for the hydroton is to keep the soil bed off of the tent's floor. This allows for a slower and smoother transition from soil to "air pruning" for the roots while keeping the dirt off of (what could become) a perched, stagnant water table.

Thank you for stopping in missnu.

I have never seen the hydroton like that, I have mixed hydroton in the soil and planted that way... this is interesting. Subbed

AssassinofYouth said:

I have never seen the hydroton like that, I have mixed hydroton in the soil and planted that way... this is interested. Subbed

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Welcome assasin, glad to have you along.

Is the hydroton layer on the bottom uncommon or am I getting old?

I thought it was uncommon. I am shy of 24 years old and only have about 8 years of experience, 6 of them being commercial.

AssassinofYouth said:

I thought it was uncommon. I am shy of 24 years old and only have about 8 years of experience, 6 of them being commercial.

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Rocks on the bottom were standard in the 80s and has worked well in our veggie garden for some time.

My experience with MJ under big lights is nowhere near 8 years. Perhaps one day we will chat about successes under HPS in 10 gallon buckets. Either way, we'll soon find out if the hydroton works.

This is AWESOME!!!!!!

johnyutah said:

This is AWESOME!!!!!!

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Haha, dunno about awesome but hopefully it'll be some fun.

Thanks for stopping in jutah, you're welcome here anytime.

overTHEman said:

Rocks on the bottom were standard in the 80s and has worked well in our veggie garden for some time.

My experience with MJ under big lights is nowhere near 8 years. Perhaps one day we will chat about successes under HPS in 10 gallon buckets. Either way, we'll soon find out if the hydroton works.

Click to expand...

Definitely interesting.

Haha yeah, interesting things have happened over the years

Someone else did this and ran into problems with the ph and a few others he had some plants with the clay balls on the bottom and others that had none. The ones with the clay balls looked like shit while the same strains and seeds from the same breeder pack had zero problems he even stated he had a buddy doing the same and the ones without the balls looked healthier. Should just put perlite or however its spelled in the bottom if your set on having something in the bottom of your pots. Also if you didn't boil your clay balls you might run into more problems like with root rot and such. Hope everything works smoothly for you and you dont run into the same problems.