Darty's grow log

[Darty]

Strain: Arcy's strain... Aurora, I think (?)
Lighting: 1 26w compact fluorescent (will likely get another) plus indirect window light.
Grow Media/Soil Mix: Still in the tub Arcy gave to me, so not sure.
Fertilizer: none yet
Temperature Range:19 degrees C - 22 degrees C
Humidity: 90% +
Started From: Seed, I think
Start Date: Got them Dec 21st.

Other Details/Images:
Both plants:


Both plants have sprouted long Aerial roots:


Sorry about the fuzzy-ness. It's hard to get the camera to focus on the white roots.


Haven't named them yet. Let's just call this one Plant A for now:


Plant B (Is looking more healthy than Plant A, with noticeable growth in the upper leaves over 1 week):


Some browning on the tips of a couple of the longer/ more slender leaves, but I consider this to be not much considering how much stress they had to endure on the trip home after picking them up from Arcy (Luckily he boxed them well (I had to take the subway and bus with them in christmas traffic, so that's 2 hours travel with plenty of time in the below freezing outside temperature)):


That's all for now. A few more things of interest: I've been keeping them in a humidity tent 24/7 and spraying roughly 3 times a day.
I plan on moving them to two separate large pots with a polyester rope wicking system to keep them watered some time in the near future, before the roots spread out too much. Not entirely sure when or how to do this with the current tub they're in now. Should I just dig out an area around them and hope to not damage the roots? And how long should I wait before transfering them? Advice on this would be appreciated.
I'm using distilled water. There were some white-flies on them to begin, but I killed most of them and wiped away any eggs I could find on the underside of the leaves and have hardly seen any since, so I think that worked.
Cheerio.

[Paradoxic]

Nice lookin plants  I thought that setup looked sorta familiar. Thats sweet you got some from Arcy.

As far as transferring, at this point I think it would be a bad idea to try and repot those plants. Seems like there would be high risk of damaging the roots.

[MstryShovel]

yeah they look good, that tub would probalby be big enough to grow them for quite some time before they would need a transplant

[Arcygenical]

Yeah, man, Lookin great 

No transplanting at all... Unfortunately. That tub is enough to get them up to about 2' high, and really really bushy... Just take clones later

Glad it's workin out for you!

[Darty]

I thought for sure they would need to be transplanted eventually. The tub doesn't seem all that deep, but I'll leave em' be all the same.
Did I get the strain info right? And what is the soil mix?

[Arcygenical]

Yep!

They were clones taken from a seedborn plant, whose parent was the blosser strain.

As for the soil, it's a 30/30/30/10 mix of Organic soil/potting soil/nutrient release Miracle Grow and Perlite... with a cm of perlite on the bottom to assist in drainage.

No need to repot for quite some time... That pot can suffice for quite awhile.

[Darty]

Strain: Aurora
Lighting: 1 26w cfl & 1 15w cfl + indirect window light.
Grow Media/Soil Mix: 30/30/30/10 mix of Organic soil/potting soil/nutrient release Miracle Grow and Perlite
Fertilizer: none yet
Temperature Range:19 degrees C - 22 degrees C
Humidity: 90% + when in dome, roughly 40% - 60% when out of dome
Started From: clone of seed-borne plant
Start Date: Got them Dec 21st. 3 Weeks now.

Other Details/Images: I have been slowly acclimatising them to the conditions in my room. I'm at about 2 1/2 hours out of the dome per day, going with half hour increments. They're getting 13-14 hours of light a day. Another thing of interest is that neither plant has lost a single leaf since I got them (naturally or accidentally) - talk about hardy.



Side view:


Plant A:


Plant B:


Plant A has a set of leaves that are a deformed shape and I have absolutely no clue as to why. They started out this shape and have since grown into it, with no signs of changing back into a regular shape. Is this just genetic variability?


Overall they both have new growth sprouting everywhere and I have not pruned them at all. Plant B is still more bushy and healthier looking, but Plant A is still doing fine, just looks smaller in comparison.


Will most likely do bi-weekly updates.

[MstryShovel]

awesome growth for 2 weeks!

those 2 leaves with the deformities wont grow out of thier deformities, they prolly developed that kink at an early state and will just keep groing around it.

also wondering what you use as your "humidity tent" for such a big setup (in terms of big pot ect.)

[Paradoxic]

Yeah, wow. Prime growth. I just realized...that soil mix is only 10% perlite. It doesnt seem like Salvia would like that because it wouldnt drain well enough, I guess not, lol. Also is there any way for the water to drain out of that tub?

[Darty]

My humidity tent is actually the plastic covering from a large gift basket that I found at my parent's place at christmas. It's fairly large, but is ripping in many places, which I've taped up. I'm trying to acclimatise it so it won't need the tent anymore because soon they won't be able to fit in it!

Paradox: I've wondered about the drainage before too. I noticed there are a few tiny holes in the bottom of the tub and I guess the inch of perlite would allow any water to drain down, but honestly I've only watered them once since I got them (if you could call it a watering, it was hardly anything, but I felt I should put some water in) and the soil is pretty much always slightly damp. I assume it dries out a bit when I leave the cover off, but most likely not much...
I think Arcy can answer the soil questions better than I can seeing as this is his formula!

Also, the pictures are kind of deceiving as to their size... to put things in perspective, the tub is about 1 foot in length, so they are still small plants, just have a lot of new growth 

[Arcygenical]

Hey man,

Glad to see how amazing they're growing for you! I told you you'd get good growth

[Darty]

Strain: Aurora
Lighting: 1 26w cfl & 1 15w cfl + indirect window light.
Grow Media/Soil Mix: 30/30/30/10 mix of Organic soil/potting soil/nutrient release Miracle Grow and Perlite
Fertilizer: Miracle Grow 15-30-15
Temperature Range: 19 degrees C - 21 degrees C
Humidity: 30%-40% recently
Started From: clone of seed-borne plant
Start Date: Got them Dec 21st. 5 Weeks now.

Other Details/Images: The plants are pretty much acclimatised now, but I still put the humidity tent on over night. This past week has been exceptionally cold and dry so I had to keep 'em in the tent and take them away from the window. I think the growth definitely slowed down a bit because of the conditions, but the week prior to this one they grew quite a bit and it's supposed to warm up a bit over the next week so things should only get better. I added a small amount of fertilizer when I watered yesterday so hopefully that kicks in a bit as well. It being winter and all I've been worried about possible root rot (reading all the cases on here made me a tad paranoid) but so far everything seems to be working out. I think being stingy with watering has been a good idea thus far.



Plant A is on the right here and plant B on the left, kind of a back shot.


Both are pretty much meshed in to each other to look like one plant, but here they are somewhat separately:
Plant A:


Plant B:


The roots have spread out quite rapidly as well. Wondering if I should be concerned about them becoming root bound any time soon...
Along the back:


Side:


And finally, a healthy plant needs a healthy base 


That's it for now, cheerio.

[skagardener]

holy crap. 5 weeks!!!! you must be feeding them radioactive substances. you got them from arcy??

[Paradoxic]

You said it ska, those plants look amazing. Perhaps the Aurora strain grows faster...it would be really interesting to do an experiment comparing the growth rates and such of various strains. You would need to grow a number of plants for each strain and hold them under identical conditions, but I think it would be worthwhile.

Great work Darty.

[Arcygenical]

Hehe. I sold him two of the plants that I use to take cuttings, so naturally they're very strong. They spent a LONG time being pinched... Even from the very first node they were pinched out, and every other node after it were pinched as well.

Darty, they're nearing their maximum size though... Since the planter they're in is relatively small, they won't get that much bigger before they strangle themselves and stay fairly dormant.

You need to take cuttings while they're thriving, and put them in seperate pots. You should be able to root about 10-12 cuttings from your plants if I counted correctly.