Totemic

Hey, not everyone that is breeding is necessarily just in it for a quick buck. Although I here you on all the nonsense that is going around.

I breed for the love of it, and although it's really small scale due to the current laws, I breed to find the best in strains I love to smoke.

Local prices are a bit high, but then that's just our weak Rand playing off the other currencies.

I would love to change your mind about at least one local breeder. 

I soak my seeds in water, and as soon as the hull cracks open and I see the white seed, it goes straight into the medium. 2 days later they break the surface.

There is a 10cm intake with fan sucking air in from above the canopy, and exhausting out 10cm ducking straight out the top of the cab.

I love organic gardening, and never use any pesticides on any plants.

When I started growing cannabis indoors however, I was forced to use pesticides, especially to control red spider mites.

In nature, it's an eat or be eaten world, with no pesticides, and that got me researching predator insects that love aphids, white fly, and most of all spider mites. So the result was that the common ladybug is best suited for this job, but I can't see myself going on a bug hunt to find enough of these little beetles to be effective. Go and look for these, and you'd be surprised just how hard they are to find. Then there is also no place where you can buy them "off the shelf" in South Africa.

But, it is actually easy to get your own sustainable supply of ladybugs going right in your back yard, for the price of a store bought head of Celery.

We all always chuck the base of the celery in the bin, but you can regrow it.

Here is how you can do this: www.17apart.com/2012/02/growing-celery-indoors-never-buy-celery.html

I did this 6 months ago in mid Winter, planted out the plant to a sunny spot in spring, and I now have an almost 2m flowering Celery plant.

To the point though; aphids just can't resist the juicy soft stems of the Celery plant, and if you leave them to proliferate, soon various insects arrive, but one in particular makes themselves home. The ladybug.

The plant will soon be teaming with what seems to be a few different insects, but in actual fact they are all ladybugs in different stages of their development, and all eating as many aphids as they can.

This one plant in my garden is producing enough ladybugs for the entire neighborhood I'm sure, and there are plenty left to service any indoor environment.

Some further reading on ladybugs: http://www.lostladybug.org/files/9%20LLP%20All%20About%20LadybugsPDF.pdf

So how does prohibition of cannabis affect you on an every day basis?

I'll start.

With cannabis being prohibited, it seems very, very close people to you, i mean family of course, seem to think it's alright to use it against you, and threaten your very freedom.

It is a really sad day for me.

Now is a great time to pop some more beans. Anywhere until mid December will yield quite a bit.

EDIT: I will add that when I mean in the shade, I mean in dappled sunlight, under a tree or so. I also time my moving into the sun with a mostly cloudy day. Not sure if it really does help, but I find that if young seedlings are given just that 24h period of intermittent sun gets them going, and putting out into a blazing day sometimes fries them.

Bummer. Those ladies are extremely committed to flowering, and will probably not reveg. They are looking good though.

I wouldn't bother re potting the flowering girls end Dec, as they will be just about done.

I find what works well when I plant an Indica dominant seed: I soak seeds in the last week of September, and have them break the soil outdoor in October in the shade. Move them to pretty much full sun from week 2.

I do follow their dosage.

I haven't used it. From your experience, how mild is it to use compared to bio pyrol for example, cause that stuff is just giving me headaches, and destroying perfectly healthy leaves more often than not.

 

Do you use Horti's Silicone?

Yeah. 

I've read mixed views on the sugar, water  and yeast method.

 

Any opinions on adding co2 using that method?

Waste of time dude. At the rate we need to vent our growing spaces, there is no time for the CO2 saturation to really get into that 1500ppm you aim for.

If you want to go a CO2 route, you better be prepared to go the whole hog, and seal off your grow space, add the necessary humidifier, and de humidifier, AC unit, and extraction. Then all that needs to be hooked up to expensive climate control gear to manipulate every single aspect of the environment. Once all that is place, then only should you consider adding CO2 IMHO. However, I am severely OCD and that's just me.

There are as many ways to set up a grow space as what there are growers, so experiment, and share your results. 

shot.

Yeah, I clean up in phases as the plant goes through the stretch phase, and by 3 weeks into 12/12 all is clear under the net. 

Finding that adding silicone to the diet right from the beginning in early veg has really helped the leaves build thick, waxy leaves.

Luckily the area I'm in experiences shedding during my lights off. 

Ok, so it's 2 weeks later, and I'm 10 days into 12/12.

Her stretch is filling the net nicely. 

There is at least another week and a half to 2 weeks of her stretch left, so she will form the block that I'm looking for.

Ja well. This is a public thread, and I posted it here to engage them as part of our ( South Africa's ) community, and not as 420sa's community.

It is sad to see that this cliquey behavior emerging. They have their own agenda's if this is their stance.

With an arrogant attitude such as that, they can't expect to be taken seriously in the emerging industry.

If there is any substance behind a magazine, it will be vested in its Editor. If the editor is not willing to engage part of a community, in the public interest, then there is no substance.

I challenge the Editor to prove me wrong.

Totemic!

Interesting.

Maybe you could invite the Editor and staff to join the forum admin.

While it is great that there is another initiative like BTL, who is the person behind it? What are their explicit views? Where is their moral compass?

These are the things I think when I visit their site, and I can't find a mission statement or even an about us one liner for that matter.

So yeah, would love to meet the people behind it. 

Ok. Competition closed.

We do have a winner, and that is PotPixie. Congratulations!

I will however not be using the logo, as it still does not meet my requirements, but never the less, please pm me with your details PotPixie, so we can arrange to get your prize through to you.

Thanks to everyone else for also taking time out to submit an entry.

The new face of Totemic looks like this:

@Dutchpride  That is a lovely space to work with. 

Can't wait to see it when you flip the circuit breaker.

Love it! 

Can you tell me more about your air circulation in the space. I know it may sound odd, but if I have to describe my environment, it's a hot, dry, very windy environment.

Hi dutch what brand of 600wled are u going to be using and at the price they are a couple of them going to dent the cash flow properly .what size room are u going to be setting up in? So u say led on its own might not do the whole job on its own? Would u mind posting the link u get ur info on led grows so I could have a brows. Thanks for the reply any advice is much appreciated.

 

Im using the ones from china 9 LED's and 9 600w 400v HPS, ya i think the LED's were around 30k something so budget went down the drain there lol.

The room is +/- 40m2 ( its a funny shaped room ) I've just googled allot also on dutch forums and there are lots of arguments of which is better, basically it is that HPS = quantity and LED is Quality and a mixture is a little less quantity and a little more quality. therefore i wanted to test out the theory myself.

Would like to see a pic of this grow room dude. 

Well, the way I see it, is that this is not a chat room really, and that's possibly why people aren't chatting.

This is a forum, and while still young, will serve as many different things to different users. To me personally a forum is a place I can learn, and teach. A place to store valuable information in the form of contributions by members for future reference and and and.....

Forums' that are more silly chatter than substantial information are useless to the next person that is just getting into growing, and searching for information.

Looks great. What reflective material are you using for the cabinet? And where did you get it?

It's sisalation, and available in 30m rolls ,1.2m wide for about R600 at any builders warehouse or other hardware store.

Good to know.

My Jack herer from my first cycle of a couple of plants

 

In a 60l bag with a medium I got from the farm.

 

I use a dripper system for the ladies, tried mixing my own nutes but got some burning so moved to greenhouse seeds nutes from hydroherbafrica

If I may ask which breeders JH are you growing out?