CABA

HomeGrown Season 7! Post-Harvest! I just wanted to follow up for a few of you on my experience with the Cannatrol Cool Cure. In a word... impressed. As promised, it perfectly dried the flower in four days. The unit removed almost exactly 32 ounces of stinky water, so I actually overloaded the unit a bit, as it warns against loading it with more than 2.2 lbs of wet material. I haven't weighed it yet, but I'm guessing it's around 11-12 ounces of flower. There were no mold issues, in spite of me overdoing it a bit. I took over two days for the dew point to stabilize. and the internal RH to drop to 60%. After it finished its four day dry, it automatically began a four day cure. I honestly barely opened the unit for 8 days. And after 8 days when I did open it up, all I smelled was a bit of hay. That old, familiar off-gassing. What I did not smell were terpenes. Evaporating terpenes. Because when you smell terps, it means you're losing terps. I couldn't resist twisting one up on day 8, while the rest of my crop was still hang-drying for another 4-6 days. I wouldn't say the flavor was quite there yet, but I was splitting hairs. It was smooth, the terps were definitely all still there and it burned clean and thoroughly. Today marks another four days, so I'll twist up another one and check it out while I start bucking the rest of my run into a can. With a UV glass door and the perfect environmentals, I feel pretty confident just leaving it in there to stay perfect for quite some time. I can't imagine not having a similar system in a commercial grow. No throwing it in bins until you're ready to either trim it or recycle the room. Perfectly preserved until you're ready to trim it... or in my case, smoke it. It will definitely be for the head stash. Stay tuned! Season 8 is ramping up! I will be showing off some new lighting products from CABA and a few different ways to grow in soil, along with a little collaboration with the folks at Tilth Soil, King Solomon Nutrients, Inc and Growbud! With GrowDirector holding down the fort. Half the plants will get NOTHING but water. And I mean nothing. I'm rooting for you, Joshua Kruszynski and Nathan Rutz! I will resist the need to feed! The rest will be more of my "commercial-style," slow feeding salts into living soils. With no runoff, of course! And it won't just be Cap Junky, but a few phenos of CC's Blueberry Hashplant from Silberhaze Genetics mixed into the canopy as well. Timing will be everything on this... https://lnkd.in/gSXGZQFE

HomeGrown Season 7! Off. The. Chain. About a week to go still on these Cap Junkies, but it is getting DANK in here. Even with carbon room scrubbers recycling the entire room every 90 seconds and a photocatalytic oxidizer running 24/7, the smell was getting outrageous. My girlfriend was complaining. My neighbor was rolling her eyes. The dogs wouldn’t even look at me. So I did something I hate to do. I negatively pressurized the room. I mounted a six inch fan right in the wall. It pulls air out of the room and pushes it through a carbon filter and into the rest of the basement. The net result? Virtually all of the smell is gone in the rest of the house and I also netted a little extra heat, giving the furnace a bit of a break. Why do I hate to do it? Now that airflow is being sucked into the room rather than drifting out, there is a much larger risk of pathogens being sucked into the room. But I’ll take the risk this time in late flower. A positively pressurized grow room is the first line of defense in biosecurity. Sponsored by CABA. Have me out for a visit to your facility and I’ll perform a free audit of your current light plan. See if we can’t get you stacking a little harder.

HomeGrown Season 7! Getting pretty frosty for #TrichedOutTuesday around here! These Cap Junkies are at day 63 and this room is smelling DANK! I love where the senescence is at this point. I cut the nitrogen several days ago. They're still being fed an EC of 1.0 of PK, calcium sulfate and magnesium sulfate, but I'm about to cut the feed of everything except a few micros and calcium, served up in a bacterial tea. Mostly I'll just let them eat what the microbes are still serving up in this Tilth Soil Bloom and ultimately the plants' own reserves of any mobile nutrients. I'll see nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium translocate. Maybe a little potassium. Anthocyanin is starting to pop. I'll be drumming up a little abiotic stress as well, mostly a little drought stress, coupled with tanking temperatures and high VPD. Cool and dry with less water. In another 10 days or so, the results will be an explosion of colors and fan leaves that are crispy. They will be even frostier than they are now, if you can believe it. The trade is in the fade. I got a chance to put this side lighting CUBE from Proximity to the test. I played with it last round, but I wasn't comparing apples to apples, as half the crop was in big soil and half in small coco. For this round, I do have two different CABA bar lights that I've been beta testing. So the light quality is a bit different, but the wattage and PPFD are the same. And each plant is on the same diet of King Solomon nutrients, each in about 4 gallons of Tilth Soil. I may eventually trial under canopy lighting, but side lighting made more sense to me. It doesn't get in the way. It doesn't get wet or dirty. But mostly the light is more evenly distributed closer to where the photosynthesis is happening. And the light is being delivered from the side, not from below, so many more of those photons are hitting the tops of the leaves and bud sites, where the plant expects them. It's only 200W, instead of 400W. One disadvantage I've found so far are a few direct contact burns where a leaf or a bud came in direct contact with a diode. But it really is minimal as I was able to train and trellis most of the stalks away from the light a bit. It also felt a bit more obstructive when I reach into the canopy to defoliate, but that was also not significant. It's very similar in material and spacing to the PVC that I normally use for trellising. The bars are just a bit thicker to accommodate the lights. I will publish final dry weights of this pattern against the control, but I can already tell it's going to be a bigger yield. This pattern has been consistently drinking about 12% more than the control, both with no runoff. It's a total jungle in there, so it's a bit hard to see. But most of the lowers are visibly bigger. And there are more of them, as I didn't lollipop this pattern quite as aggressively. There is no larf on these plants. Everything has bag appeal. B buds at least. Thoughts on UCL v. side lighting?

Well, our mission to select and vet a cost-effective bar light is finally coming together. About a year ago, it became apparent to me and CABA that we needed a new bar light offering. We were losing a few bids with our quality fixtures made right in Spokane to cheap Chinese and Mexican imports. For a lot of operators in a severely price-compressed market, inexpensive is the only way to go at this point. And cheap Chinese imports have become VERY commoditized. But we didn't want a fixture that was just cheap. It had to meet the standards and expectations of our engineers in Washington, so they felt confident that it would perform day in and day out. We also had to feel confident enough to offer a 5 year warranty with it. Dimming it and cycling it literally thousands of times. This is the third fixture that I've run through the paces. As a cultivator, I needed to be happy with the way the light performed. And it has proven to perform as good or better than any light that has been hung in my room- some costing me was much as $1200. But don't take my word for it. The pictures are worth a couple thousand words. This is only the third time in my growing life that I have hit a 4per. Yep, four pounds under one 4x4 ft. canopy. Yep, 113 grams per square foot. The grams per watt on this run was about 2.5. Not my most efficient yield, but certainly respectable. We've got a container headed to Washington and one headed to Ohio. Hit me up for an audit of your room and a PPFD perfect lighting plan. I'm willing to offer some absolutely ridiculous prices on these first couple of containers to prime the pump, so to speak. There are going to be some other lighting vendors that will be crying over these. Not my problem. The first thing someone pointed out to me was that the efficacy was a bit lower than some fixtures with heavier red content. My answer was one of the pictures below. Coen Cornelissen with What Rebates will also work his magic to get your utility provider to cover part or even all of your costs, depending on who provides your juice and in what state you grow. DM me to talk prices.

Our mother plants are thriving under the Bloom 600 by CABA 2.5 EC 5.8-5.9 pH 2-gallon coco bags

HomeGrown Season 7! This is what a 4per looks like. These are day 56 and still stacking. I won’t take them down until the mid 70’s and hopefully they’ll be crunchy by then. ?? This set up has been rocking. I pulled a 4per out from under this light last round and it looks like we won’t be far off here either. Amazing. Kudos to the warmer spectrum on this new CABA CTB-6 bar light. I did not expect it to outperform every fixture that’s been in this room, but it has. Twice. On a cut I’ve been running for two years. Only variable that’s different this time is the substrate- Tilth Soil instead of Roots Organics Lush. I didn’t push the nutrients as hard in the early weeks and there was a midstream adjustment, mostly a little more nitrogen and potassium. Easy enough to spot and correct, if you leave a few fan leaves on the plants. ?? The yield may suffer a tad, but the quality will be tops. It already smells dank AF in here with the filtration on max. Hopefully the neighbors won’t complain. - Each plant in about 4 gallons of Tilth Bloom, nine plants per light. - Average ECs of about 1.4 of King Solomon nutes, some fulvic acid, silica and kelp extract - A Terp Tea by Roots Organics about once a week, a quarter cup per 5 gallons, bubbled for 24 hours in dechlorinated water at a pH of 7 - Each plant maxed out at about 20 oz, three times a day. No runoff. - Approximately 1100 umols at the tippy top - CO2 has been about 1200 ppm - Room temps around 80, leaf temps 77 - VPD was about 1.3 early in flower, currently about 1.6. Headed to over 2.0. What else would you like to know? Other than it smokes oh so lovely?

HomeGrown Supplemental! Here's a fun one for #TrichedOutTuesday! My apologies for the loose photo formats. Busy day! But I wanted to share this special Cap Junky. I decided to flower it out right in the bag of Tilth Soil Bloom, about a cubic foot. She has had a half dozen feedings of King Solomon nutrients by Damian Solomon. The EC was about 1.4 with no runoff. It's also had a few Terp Teas from Roots Organics along the way, bubbled for 24 hours in dechlorinated water before application. About a 1/4 cup per 5 gallons. That's it. Just water the rest of the cycle. This is day 56, so the senescence is a bit ahead of schedule. She's already translocating nitrogen and phosphorus. But I can completely control the throttle from here. I'll probably keep up a low dose of micros, calcium carbonate a tad of calcium sulfate, as calcium, sulfur and a few micros aren't mobile. Mostly I'll just let the plant eat its reserves and feed macros lightly if I feel like I'm going to touch down before the runway, so to speak. She will be beautifully dying by day 70-75 and will almost definitely end up being head stash. An example of how easy it can be. Or I could have just put it in two bags of Tilth Soil and just gone with plain water. But I didn't have the space in the aisle. And this was fun. I might do a whole run like this. Sponsored by CABA. Let's sesh in your garden sometime and we can dial in your lights.

One of our warmer spectrums in the hands of a pro. Hit us up for a free audit of your grow and a redesign of your canopy. We'll even handle the rebates.

Happy Monday morning! A few quick shots of two happy Cap Junkies in Tilth Soil Bloom, lightly fed about once a week. Lots of bacteria. Day 40 here. The bigger one was vegged and flowered right in the bag. Because you can’t do that. Now, back to work! Grown under a CABA warm spectrum. Leaning into the warmer light lately and loving what I see. This is a 3500K base.

HomeGrown Season 7! Here’s a little tasteful root porn. I hit everyone with about an inch of Tilth Soil top dress. I was a little concerned it’d be hot, but these roots totally disagree. Crazy root development still on day 37. Backing off on feeding anything mobile for now until I see a deficiency. Any deficiency. Anywhere. I’ll keep up a low dose of calcium sulfate and micros. And keep the bacteria coming! Sponsored by CABA. Superior lighting design and consultation by Brett Horstketter and yours truly. Does your lighting vendor show up with an electrical engineer, a lighting designer and an expert cultivator familiar with your other systems? HMU anytime.