Can anyone tell us what the exact soil brand or if a custom mix, what the ingredients are to the soil Green House uses when comparing their hydro results with an organic soil grow. They give very detailed info about the hydro grow and nothing about the organic grow except they do mention that they never add fertilizers of any kind. Soil can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and results can vary greatly depending on the mix and what's exactly in it. Thanks

I am an outdoor grower located at 42* latitude north which is at the same latitude as northern Spain, the northern California/Oregon border and about 5* north of the Hindu Kush region. On the Greenhouse website, they have a chart with all of their strains that gives an estimate of harvest time outdoors that can be seen on the Greenhouse website, under the research and development icon under GreenHouse strains statistics. I am looking to get an opinion of the accuracy of these estimates and at what exact latitude they are for. I know it says for the northern hemisphere but harvest times can be drastically different from 25*N to 45*N since the longest days are longer the further north you go and the date at which a plant will begin to flower is later, because the daylight hours don't get short enough until later in the year. I will give an example of three different latitudes north, the length of the longest day on June 21st and the date daylight is 14 hours or less, which I have found almost all strains will start to flower at when grown indoors. 28* latitude N - longest day 13.58 hours - always below 14 hours 35* latitude N - longest day 14.31 hours - date daylight is 14 hours long July 27 42* latitude N - longest day 15.18 hours - date daylight is 14 hours long August 12 61* latitude N the Matanuska Valley in Alaska - longest day 19.22 hours - date daylight is 14 hrs. Sept. 3 Now I know that every strain will adapt to the natural light cycles at the latitude it is grown in and the amount of light on the date it will start to flower will be different but only, in my own personal experience, if the daylight is 14.5 hours or less. I'm looking for strains that will finish preferably no later than Sept. 20th at 42*N and definitely no later than October 10th because the weather conditions here are both moist and cold but as long as you harvest before Sept. 20th you won't have any problems with mold or frost/freezes because it is still very warm here, even though 3 weeks later there could be snow on the ground. In my experience at 42*N most hybrid strains will start to flower by August 1st which has 14.26 hours of daylight but then like most strains they take 8-10 weeks to finish, which puts them somewhere between October 1 and 14th. I have grown a few strains that actually started flowering in the last weeks of July with 14.5 hours of daylight and when they did, they were finished on September 20th. So if this helps anyone that has grown one of these strains indoors and you know it will flower with 14.5 hours of light, than please let me know. So what I am looking for is exactly what latitude the estimates in that chart was estimated for, if someone can answer that. If you have grown a strain on the list outdoors and your harvest time was different than it states, can you please tell me the strain name, degree latitude north it was grown at and when you planted and harvested. I am also interested in any strain recommendations, from either Greenhouse Seeds or here from Strainhunters that may fit what I am looking for, if in your experience, you grew it outdoors and it finished before the estimate on the chart. If you have, please include the strain, latitude grown at and date planted and harvested. Thanks for reading this long post and I hope it will help many others. I hope to return the favor by hopefully answering some questions using my own knowledge.

Most strains these days are F1 hybrids and nowhere near stable. It's no different than trying to cross a Black Lab with a Siberian Huskie, the first generation of puppies might look like Black Labs, might look like Siberian Huskies, might look like a perfect mix and anything in between. What makes the issue even worse is that instead of dealing with two stable breeds as the parents, the parents are actually mutts that probably came from mutts before them. The only way you would get similar phenos is if you get feminized seeds and even then they would only be similar if the seeds were produced from pollen of the same plant. That's is a major difference between regular and feminized seeds and some people don't want feminized seeds because they either want the variations in phenos, they think they are more likely to hermie or whatever other reason someone may have. When I say "most strains" I'm not referring to any Green House or Strain Hunter strains because they start with landrace strains to develop their strains and that's one of the reason I'm here. There are a lot of strains that have come from basically mutts and I'm not at all saying that's bad because some of the best strains are. I've seen a lot of seeds from other breeders/seed banks that have an unbelieveable amount of variation and that's why you should go with a more reputable one, so you have a much better idea of what you are getting, if better consistency is what you are after.

What someone should do that I have never seen before is make a grow journal post about their hydroponic nightmare with pics of all the slime, root rot, algae, stunted growth, hose popping off flood creating, total plant death nightmare!!!

Thanks FIM for typing all of that as I didn't want too. LOL You also talked about reservoir size but didn't say how it and evaporation can also affect ph and that's why bigger is better as well as all the other reasons you mentioned. I've seen wild fluctuations in others setups that used an undersized reservoir and I just thought it was caused by the uptake of nutrients that raised the ph followed by a quick rebound back down as the water evaporated. If your medium has any ingredients that can change the ph as they break down, like coco does, than that can also affect ph. I think you also mentioned to check ph before and after it cycles through the first time and I have seen crazy differences when checked before and after the cycle and then the next day. I never tried to figure out the cause because I knew the reservoir was way to small and the larger one fixed the problem. And I second the soil suggestion.

I talked about organic soil mixes in some of my other posts where I said I would post some mix recipes, so here they are. These mixes are specifically designed to have all the necessary ingredients in the mix to provide all the necessary nutrients, not only for the plant but for the actual soil mix itself to get all the fungi, bacteria and everything else needed for the bio-reactive process to occur in conjunction with the plants roots, which work similar to our stomachs by secreting enzymes and chemicals to help break down the "food". I am listing a couple of mixes, one is a variety that I made and the other is very similar using different ingredients that break down slower. You can mix and use my recipe immediately as the ingredients are more readily available to the plant than the second, which requires(or is recommended) composting before it's use. The second recipe is used by a very well known grower and breeder, T.G.A. Subcool, a member of the High Times Hall of Fame. Both mixes are designed so that all you have to do is add water throughout the entire grow cycle, no matter the length. These mixes have enough ingredients to last long enough that it is highly recommended you compost and reuse it a second time, but the decision to do that can be up to you depending on your ability to compost or you would just rather spend more money on a fresh mix everytime to be absolutely sure you don't have any problems. Although not required, using a low PPM(such as RO), ph adjusted water is always best but there are ingredients in the mix specifically to combat any water problems so it isn't necessary. My recipe; 4.0 cu. ft. of any good quality basic organic potting soil mixad. I personally use the 3.8 cu. ft. Promix bails.6 cups Bone Meal4 cups Blood Meal4 cups kelp meal3 cups Dolomite Lime1 1/2 cups Epsom salt1 small bag Worm Castings1 bag Perlite Then you can add one or all of the following optional ingredients from either group. You can also use any similar product if these are not available in your area; 6 tbsp. Plant Success Granular3 tbsp Soluble Seaweed extract 3 tbsp Rare Earthor my new personal preference;3 tbsp each of Roots Organics Uprising Grow, Foundation and Bloom. Here is T.G.A.'s recipe; 8 large bags of a high-quality organic potting soil with coco fiber and mycorrhizae (i.e., your base soil)25 to 50 lbs of organic worm castings5 lbs steamed bone meal5 lbs Bloom bat guano5 lbs blood meal3 lbs rock phosphate¾ cup Epson salts½ cup sweet lime (dolomite)½ cup azomite (trace elements)2 tbsp powdered humic acid These recipes are as good if not better than anything you can buy and at less than half the price, which is it's main advantage over other mixes. A lot of the ingredients are very fine and it's very important they are mixed very well, so I recommend using a composting drum or renting a cement mixer, which is only around $30 a day to rent to mix all the ingredients in. If you notice, I use perlite to aerate the soil and T.G.A., as well as others use coco. What you use and the amount you use is up to you based on personal preference and how often you want to water. I personally have used both individually and combined and I also add additional perlite for more aeration and frequent waterings. With my mix I can get yields within 85% of the best hydro method I've compared it to. Just water them and there is basically nothing you can do to fail or not have great identical harvests every time no matter the strain. No flushing required and I guarantee some of the best smelling, tasting flowers you have ever grown. If you ask most of the winners of any Cannabis Cup, including T.G.A., their entry was grown organically in a mix similar to these.

You could wait until Dec 21st but as I posted in my last reply, to get the optimum growth you would be better off starting them around Nov. 15th down there in the south, which corresponds to May 15th in the north. If you have some kind of supplemental light, and for this it wouldn't have to be anything more than a fluorescent, you could put them out even sooner by putting them outside and either placing the light over them for a couple of hours before dawn or after dusk until Nov. 15th or pulling them inside where the light is and doing the same.

Are we talking indoor or out here? There are a lot of strains that don't have a lot of odor and others that do so it isn't something I find unusual. I have a large collections of different strains grown, dried and cured the exact same way and some you can smell when you walk into the room and others you can't even smell when you open the jar. I used to think it might have something to do with how I was drying or curing them but now I realize that some just smell a lot and others don't and IMO it's odor isn't related to it's potency.

It doesn't look like any nutrient deficiency I've seen and if it were a ph problem it would mean it's not getting enough nutrients. From the pictures and your original description of it appearing "silvery" would lead me to say it's a pest, most likely thrips. Do you have any fungus gnats? You said the first pics were taken from late in the flowering period. When were the others taken and where were they located on the plant? Are you finding leaves like this all over the plant or only in certain areas? If in certain areas, where?

I'd just add that ph fluctuations are normal with hydro and FIM covered how to minimize them. It is also why you need to check it often or else things can go bad real quick.

After thinking about this thread, I decided to edit it and propose a simple experiment that anyone that wants to test the technique can do. If the theory is correct, what you are saying is that the flowers don't need the fan leaves to grow because the light delivered directly to them, will make them grow, so here is my experiment to prove what I think is the correct answer and I am pretty sure once anyone does it, they will convinced themselves what they think is correct. You can start out in two ways, by either taking an existing plant you have and sort of dividing it in half or starting from a new single stemmed clone, pinch the top so there will only be two and performed the following. At around three weeks into flowering the plants should be showing some nice sized flowers. Now take the plant you either divided or pinched the top to grow into two halves and on one side cut all of the fan leaves off leaving nothing but the flowers and leave the other side alone. I'm so certain of what the results will be that I want to even put things in your favor, so wherever the plant is in the room, I want you to position it so the side you cut the fan leaves off of, is always pointed to and getting more light than the side that you left all the fan leaves on. If you do this experiment, you will know what technique works better. If you do it PLEASE post pics of the plant and it's progress here so everyone can see. I would do it but unfortunately I do not have the capability to at this time because I am preparing for the outdoor season. If you want to read and hear my thoughts on the subject, you can continue to read but IMO if you do the above, you won't need to talk about it anymore unless you want to get into the same discussion with differing opinions that has been going on since people have been growing indoors. The only way to prove which way works better is to do a controlled test like this otherwise it's like asking everyone what the best strain is, you'll get many different answers from many different people. Do a test(preferably many tests) post the results and let people decide for themselves from the results. ORIGINAL POST I've tried just about every technique you can think of an here is my input on the subject. Not saying I'm correct and anyone else is wrong, just stating my opinion based on my experience. The largest surface area on any part of the plant, is on the large fan leaves, therefore the more light they receive, the more the plant will grow. Here is where things can become different when it comes to the difference between indoor and outdoor lighting. In most indoor set up, the light is set up in a stationary position and by its very nature, the amount of lumens decreases with the distance from the light. This is the reason techniques such as SOG & SCROG are the most efficient and when used, the removal of any leaves isn't necessary. If you are using a stationary light and not using one of those methods, the removal of fan leaves may appear to be producing more buds and indeed it is by allowing more light to the lower parts of the plants where those buds are developing but you are sacrificing the higher intensity light at the top and for the top of the plants for the development of buds at lower levels with lower intensity light. What would make you think that you will get more from the lower buds with less light than the ones closer to the light? The newer growers may say newer times better techniques but I have yet to hear the logic behind why removing the leaves with more surface area will create larger flowers using the remaining leaves with much less surface area, except that it allows more light to everything below and I explained how the light decreases with distance so again how can that work? I have never removed any leaves from any plant because I have never seen the logic in it but again, I am not saying I'm right and anyone else it wrong. I do know that the reason a SOG/SCROG setup is more efficient and will outproduce any technique where the plant is grown untrained laterally, without moving and/or adding supplemental side lighting, is because of the lumen loss with distance. I can confirm that I have grown both ways with SOG/SCROG being the best yielding and if you have ever grown a plant taller than a few feet tall under a single stationary light setup, you've noticed that the growth canopy on the top of the plant is never larger than a few feet regardless of the actual plant height and that's because of the same loss of light problem.

And they said Gorilla Glue #4 couldn't be grown outdoors.

Oh it's going to happen and hopefully we here in the US are the first to do it because you know everyone will follow once we do, since we basically dictate the world drug policy anyway. LOL One of the reasons other countries won't legalize before the US is because we will put economic sanctions on you if you don't follow our drug policies. Personally, I'm not a fan of my country's drug policy, especially the now 44 year war on drugs.

One of the best known and top 25 strains of all time came from bag seed, the original OG Kush as well as the soon to be added, Gorilla Glue #4!

Got more pics of more leaves as well as the underside?

Not me. I have that Benjamin Button disease where I was born at age 80 and just get un-wiser as I get older/younger. LOL j/k

VPN!

Welcome! Growing organic can be so easy some refer to it as stupid proof(not my term and I'm not calling anyone stupid.LOL) Look for some of my existing or soon future posts as I will be posting some great organic soil recipe's.

Welcome! If you want to know a good soil mix, read through my posts. I talk about some good soil recipes and will be posting more in the future.

Welcome to the boards. You may want to reconsider moving to the Netherlands as the laws have changed and they are not the cannabis friendly country they were known to be, especially to non-citizens. I'm no expert but you should definitely look into it before you make a move. Besides there are and are going to be many other MUCH better places where it will be completely legal like currently in Jamaica and soon to be in most if not all the USA!

I want to start out this post by stating that this is a theory discussion post and anything I state is my theory only supported by the evidence discussed. I am by no means saying that my theory is correct because although I have done some testing and gotten some results, it isn't conclusive enough to prove anything, hence me making a post to see if others have tried what I have, what there results were and what other theories may be out there. I'll start out by asking the main question and that is how many of you have ever tried a flowering light cycle that differed from 12/12 (12 hours on, 12 hours off) continuously throughout the entire cycle? I personally have experimented with many different cycles from 12/12 to duplicating a specific latitude daily daylight hours to trying crazy experiments such as 24/24, 24/12, 18/18, 18/12 and others. I have a theory that one of the causes of hermaphrodites is the use of a continuous 12/12 light cycle throughout the flowering period, which in 95% of the strains grown today, is very unnatural and doesn't duplicate nature are all. All over the world no matter what your latitude, the natural daylight cycle differs almost daily with each day getting shorter and shorter. I have grown clones from the exact same mother plant, from many different strains and mother plants, both indoors with a convention 12/12 cycle throughout the flowering cycle, with a lighting schedule that duplicates a natural cycle that decreases daily(or every few days depending on your timers ability) and outdoors. In my experience I have found that a clone grown with a 12/12 that would develop hermies, didn't develop them using a more natural decreasing daylight period indoors or out. One other thing I have noticed in my own experience is that sativa dominant plants that came from equatorial strains are far less likely to have hermies than indica dominant or hybrid strains, indoors, when grown under a 12/12 continuous cycle and I believe that's because strains developed from strains that came from lower latitudes have a natural daily daylight variance that is closer to 12/12, where the time between the longest and shortest day only differs by minutes than strains that came from higher latitude strains, where the difference between the longest and shortest days can vary by hours. One of the ways to make a female plant produce it's own seeds, which are usually feminized, is through a process called rodelization, which is basically stressing a plant using various methods to induce its natural ability to fertilize itself as a natural survival mechanism. One of the natural ways this happens and the easiest way I have found to make a female fertilize herself is by using light stress. In nature, a plant produces its own pollen when it has grown for a long time without being fertilized because it thinks it isn't going to be fertilized. In my opinion this is almost exactly what every person is doing when they use a 12/12 continuous light cycle. As most would agree, most hermies pop out later in the cycle and I think it is because the plant gets stressed under a 12/12 continuous cycle. My theory is supported by the fact that the same exact clones grown using a decreasing light schedule or outdoors, did not produce any hermies when they did under a 12/12 continuous cycle. To add some additional evidence, I personally have never had a plant have hermies outdoors, ever, and I know for a fact that I have grown a lot of seeds that either came from a plant I grew that produced it's own S1's or they were feminized seeds, that most people argue are more likely to have hermies, and didn't when grown outdoors. To sum all this up, my theory is that most hermies are cause by the stress caused by using a continuous 12/12 light cycle, which is totally unnatural, thus stressing the plants causing them to produce hermies and that by simply changing your light cycle to a more natural one that decreases over time, you will dramatically reduce if not eliminate any hermie problems you may have. So I would like to know if anyone else has also done any experiments like this or if you have done other similar things like grown the same clone indoors and out and indoors you had hermies but outdoors you didn't. Have you ever had a plant produce hermies outdoors and can you say 100% that you are certain it wasn't possibly pollinated by something someone else was growing nearby, that you didn't know about? If you have, please share you experience. If you haven't but have reason and evidence to show something different than by all means please share because as I stated, this is only a theory I have that so far my evidence and experience has shown to be probable. I haven't been able to find to many other people that don't use anything other than a continuous 12/12 cycle and I can't believe that I am the only one that has thought of this before, so hopefully we can get some additional input on this from others.

For those interested that are still reading, here is an example of the light cycle I try to duplicate indoors that I have found almost every strain to start to flower and finish at, except any strain derived from lower latitude strains such as a haze. It is the same amount of daily daylight hours at 40* latitude, which is the same latitude as northern California, where just about any strain can be grown because of the more consistent warm temperatures. At this latitude most strains will begin to flower by Aug 1(north March 1 southern hemisphere). The amount of daily daylight per day is below. I would like to point out that most strains will finish in the amount of time estimated by most breeders when growing indoors using a 12/12 continuous cycle, using the schedule below, which if you notice is usually not long after the amount of daylight is just getting to or below 12 hours. If I were going to grow a more equatorial/lower latitude strain, I would duplicate the cycle from Sept. 1 and go into Nov. which I can display in needed. Aug Sept Oct h m h m h m 01 14:15 13:02 11:44 02 14:13 13:00 11:42 03 14:11 12:57 11:39 04 14:09 12:55 11:36 05 14:07 12:52 11:34 06 14:04 12:50 11:31 07 14:02 12:47 11:29 08 14:00 12:44 11:26 09 13:58 12:42 11:23 10 13:56 12:39 11:21 11 13:53 12:37 11:18 12 13:51 12:34 11:16 13 13:49 12:31 11:13 14 13:46 12:29 11:11 15 13:44 12:26 11:08 16 13:42 12:24 11:05 17 13:39 12:21 11:03 18 13:37 12:18 11:00 19 13:35 12:16 10:58 20 13:32 12:13 10:55 21 13:30 12:10 10:53 22 13:27 12:08 10:50 23 13:25 12:05 10:48 24 13:23 12:03 10:45 25 13:20 12:00 10:43 26 13:18 11:57 10:41 27 13:15 11:55 10:38 28 13:13 11:52 10:36 29 13:10 11:50 10:33 30 13:08 11:47 10:31 31 13:05 10:29 I would like to note that by duplicating these daily daylight amounts indoors, not only will they usually finish in the same number of weeks that are predicted, but I am pretty sure they will yield more because of the longer amounts of light. It is hard to prove since there are so many other variables but a lot of grow books I have read from Ed Rosenthal, Jorge Cervantes and others all say that the longer or shorter the amount of daylight, the higher the yield using more light and shorter amount of time to harvest using less, so I am going off of that information as well my own experience.

I would have responded to this sooner but I just signed up and read this. YES you should have forced flowered them if you started them in August-October in the southern hemisphere because the days were getting longer from then through Dec. 21. If you are in South Africa you are around 30* latitude so on September 1 there was only 10.5 hours of daylight and on Dec. 21, there is 14 hours and 9 minutes. The plants were flowering because the total amount of daylight was below the flowering trigger point from Aug.-Oct. and they probably got stunted as the amount of daylight was increasing and you want it to be decreasing to induce flowering. If the pictures are from the time of your OP, then they probably stayed stunted or reverted back to vegetative growth and they will naturally begin to flower after Dec. 21 as the amount of daylight per day decreases, with the end of January being the "usual" time for a strain native to that latitude or designed to be grown at that latitude. The ideal time to plant them outdoors would around Nov. 15th or later up through Jan 1. If those are still in the same pots then you should transplant them into the largest containers you can, yesterday! Right now Feb. 22, you should have around 13 hours of daylight so they should be flowering again. Make sure you water them and use some kind of transplant solution to prevent as much shock and stunted growth from it as possible. If you are using a soil mix that needs fertilizer then now is also the time to hit them with some kind of "bloom" fertilizer. If all goes well they should be ready around April 1st but they could go longer because of the stunting from having them flower before the longest day and/or from the transplanting. Even if you want to harvest sooner, so you may consider NOT transplanting them because they may be stunted, DON't do that and transplant them, because right now in the pots they are in now, you are not going to get much more production than you see now and you will get a lot more if you transplant them.

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't post the link to their page when I first made this post so here it is for easier reference; http://www.greenhouseseeds.nl/shop/green-house-strains-statistics.html I'm pretty sure GH would have picked a specific latitude for those estimate's but any info at any latitude can also give you more information as well as the plant's genetics. To give some quick examples so others can get an idea is that some equatorial strains that grow in lower latitudes where the longest day on the summer solstice doesn't get above 13 hours of daylight, can't really be grown at a higher latitude because they will not start to flower until roughly 13 hours of light, which gets further out from the solstice as you get higher in latitude as I briefly explained in my OP. Those strains are the ones in yellow at the bottom of their chart that have harvest estimates from mid October into November and most are sativa dominant. The strains higher up on their chart are bred from landrace strains located at higher latitudes where the days are longer on the summer solstice(example's in my OP). These strains will usually begin to flower with more and in some cases a lot more daylight so they will finish outdoors before they weather gets cold as it does at higher latitudes. If someone can tell me from personal experience a particular strain they grew on that list outdoors and the latitude it was grown at I can figure out the harvest date estimate for another latitude by looking at a spread sheet I have that will show the amount of daylight at any specific latitude for every day of the year. So even if we can get an answer from GH on the latitude those harvest estimates are for, if anyone also has personal experience with any of them and can give me the latitude they were grown at, I can make a post with my spread sheet that anyone can use to make their own estimate of when a strain should be ready for harvest at their latitude.

No one from greenhouse or anyone else can comment?