Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 29 Entries. Wednesday, January 1 View Page Happy New Year everyone, Check out this vid I made on how to get seeds featuring Doc Rodebaugh and Ken D. Its more for beginners but hey you may still enjoy it. YouTube   Sunday, January 26 View Page My mom knitted our cat a pumpkin hat. You can tell he LOVES it.   Wednesday, February 12 View Page DRAT! My first indoor growing experiment was a total failure. The goal was to see if the plants benefitted from a nightly rest period or if 24/7 light was just better. Results were inconclusive because the plants in both tents look like hell. Here were the conditions that produced such lousy results: Substrate: 50% miracle grow potting mix and 50% coco coir (potting mix may have been too hot or coir had some salts in it?) Lighting: Approx. 350 PPFD (I think this was too high) on 24 hrs in Tent 1 and on 16 hrs in Tent 2 (Both look similarly bad) Watering/Feeding: none other than initial substrate hydration. Soil stayed moist for full 12ish days it took to get to this point Temp: ranging from 70-80 degrees F. Welp, now I know what not to do. Onto the next attempt. And if that one goes poorly I'll do what we all do in a moment of desperation and bug Matt!   Wednesday, February 12 View Page In a day or two I will start a new batch of seeds in this. This is a tweaked version of Dan Sutherland's seed starting mix. Original Recipe: - 3 Parts Peat Moss - 3 Part Fine Perlite - 2 Parts Coco Coir - 0.5 Parts Worm Castings - 0.25 Parts Kelp Meal - A Healthy Serving of Myco innoculant My Add-Ins: - Some Calcium carbonate dissolved in water to maybe neutralize the peat (probably pointless) - Yucca Extract to help with hydrophobicidity (50% sure thats a real word) and feed microbes - ROOT microbe inocculant (I had an open bag of it and thought why not)   Friday, February 14 View Page For Valentines day my girlfriend made me another pumpkin toons card. Any old-school growers know what the 723 was?   Friday, February 14 View Page My homemade germination chamber. It is warmed by a mini heating mat in the bottom of the cooler and the seeds sit on the perforated cardboard shelf. There is a thermostat system that keeps the temp at 86 degrees F. It works well but I'm having issues with mold forming even when I soak in 1% peroxide. Thoughts?   Friday, February 14 View Page A new batch of test seeds are potted up. These are in the Sutherland recipe seed starting mix and under an approx. PPFD of 250. I think this should work out better than the first run. They were hydrated with a light shower of humic/fulvic and seaweed.   Friday, February 14 View Page I hope this stuff is as water soluble as Ron says!   Thursday, February 20 View Page I don't want to spread rumors but I heard that the first 50 people to register for the 150 square foot challenge this year who are 13-29 years old will have their entry fee waived and will be eligible for a bonus prize if they finish in the top 3 of the contest. In other news, I planted my practice seeds way too deep and they are only just breaching lol.   Sunday, March 9 View Page I keep killing my practice starts. I am trying another method that I am copying from Jamie Graham. The seeds were soaked in 1% hydrogen peroxide for 4 hours and then placed in cups of moist Jiffy seed starter at 90 degrees. They have bags and a dome over them to keep in humidity. I hope this works. I am starting to get a little nervous.   Sunday, March 9 View Page My seedlings keep getting this weird issue where they only grow roots on one side of the stem and that causes them to flop over. Anyone seen this before?   Tuesday, March 11 View Page 72 hours into the "Jamie Cup" method. 4/8 seedlings have breached and a 5th looks to be on the way. I took those off the heat and will give the remaining cups 48 hours to sprout before I give up on them.   Wednesday, March 12 View Page Spring Soil Test: In one year my PH has gone from 5.3 to 6.5 which is awesome. This will not only help with nutrient absorption but also with fighting soil disease as I understand fusarium prefers a very acidic soil. Yeah all of my nutrients are low but they're headed in the right direction and it's always easier to add than it is to remove.   Thursday, March 13 View Page Good News: 8/8 Germination on the "Jamie Cup" method. I will be using this germination method for my seeds this season for sure. I'm having some issues with seed coat shedding but I can just file my seeds so that will hopefully solve that.   Thursday, March 13 View Page Bad News: I'm having the same issues with my first true leaf as the first batch of test seeds. This soil mix has no real NPK in it so i doubt this is nutrient burn. That leads me to believe that this has to do with light intensity. According to the phototone app i'm at about 250ppfd which shouldn't be an issue. I need a better way to measure light intensity and i know just the guy who can help me with that!   Friday, March 14 View Page Matt was nice enough to let me borrow his par meter. Tomorrow i'll test it out in my grow tent and see what light levels my seedlings are actually experiencing.   Saturday, March 15 View Page Par Readings: While the meter reads 183, that is only because the door to my grow tent is open. When i closed it, the reading shot up to 200-250. This explains why my seedlings were getting leggy but doesn't explain the "burning" of my plants. That level of intensity shouldn't cause burning as far as i know. I added a humidifier and a small fan just to see if that helps. I'm going to show Matt my setup and the problem plant tomorrow so hopefully there's something obviously wrong with it.   Sunday, March 16 View Page After looking at the plant, Matt told me he believed my issue to be an iron deficiency. He gave me some biomin iron to apply to the plant and see if that fixes the problem. Lets see!   Monday, March 17 View Page I started some giant eggplant seeds today. Dave Bennett gave me some of his 5.2lb seeds and some of his 5.6lb seeds he used to grow the world record. I am continuously shocked by how generous this community is. That's part of what inspired me to think of the 150 contest sponsor thing. I've already been given so much, I want to give back in some way every year. If anyone has any tips on growing these i'm all ears. They're in peat pellets on a heat mat at 92 degrees.   Wednesday, March 19 View Page 400lbs of gypsum. I may add another 200ish more as per Matt's recommendations. I have been playing with the Langley soil calculator and it seems like adding a bunch of calcium will help a lot of my ratios move in the right direction.   Saturday, March 22 View Page As of now this is what I will be adding to my patch this year. I based it on Matt's recommendations and Cecil Weston's tutorial video. Obviously I couldn't get all of the ratios perfect but i'm still pretty pleased with it. Let me know if you see any mistakes. Thanks!   Monday, March 24 View Page Very good news. the practice seedlings are responding to the chelated iron Matt prescribed. You can see the plant gradually growing out of its nutrient deficiency. A lot of the issues i've been having have been due to overwatering (iron deficiency) or...   Monday, March 24 View Page Underwatering, which most likely caused this nutrient burn you see. The plant was watered a sufficient amount and now you can see the next true leaf coming in normally. I have a strategy to avoid these issues and I will put it into practice for my next and final round of practice starts.   Monday, March 24 View Page Check out my eggplant seedlings. They popped up really quickly. I heard they take forever to grow which is why I started them early.   Thursday, March 27 View Page This will be my patch layout. Each square is 1 square foot. (2) 1200 square foot plants.   Sunday, March 30 View Page Cover crop (winter rye and hairy vetch) chopped and all branches around the patch have been trimmed. Now we wait for the soil to dry out so we can till.   Monday, March 31 View Page I will be growing 2 plants this year. Which would you plant? I love ugly pumpkins which makes me want to plant the 2356.7 Mendi. It grew the 2240.5 Connolly which is my favorite looking pumpkin ever.   Monday, March 31 View Page As far as pretty pumpkins go, here's what I'll be growing in my 150 patch. The 1461 is an obvious choice and the 1424.5 is awesome looking as well. Thank you for the seeds Doc and Tom!   Thursday, April 3 View Page I am really at a loss here. this plant and pot were weighed at transplant when the soil was "one or two drops" moist and then every day i would water it until it reached that weight again so that it would constantly be at that "perfect level" of moisture. The watering had chelated iron and a pinch of kelp and yet it looks exactly like any other trial I have done. This is pretty discouraging. I think i'm going to try to start some seeds in a mini greenhouse outside to see if they react better to natural sunlight.