Let’s see those snaps of your first crop!

[Somatek]

Here’s mine, literal snap shots on a disposable camera as digital camera’s weren’t a common thing back then (my Dad bought a Ricoh 4mp camera for 700-1000 a couple years later which was fancy gear back then) and I was paranoid about having pics developed at a small photo lab so I’d only use disposable camera’s and drop them off at the grocery store to be sent off and processed and returned to a friends address.  So much more work to get pics back then lol.

This was my first indoor crop around 1999 (maybe 2000, I was a raver back then and timelines are foggy), grown under a 400w mH in promix with pure blend pro botanicare, fulvic acid and a bunch of other unnecessary amendments the hydro shop convinced me I needed to grow the best “tomatoes” ever.  The variety was Purple Star, purchased from the Hidden Jungle in TO (it was a whole adventure going to buy them after a party and definitely not sober) from the Quebec Seed Bank.  I still actually have some of the F2’s I made from crossing those seeds together, although I doubt their viable.  Purple Star was one of the original cultivar introductions when Dutch Passions first started in 1987, although I didn’t know that until years later.  I bought it because it was listed as a pure indica and I was considering it or Afghan #1 but I always loved purple weed and gambled on Purple Star (it wasn’t, only turned purple outdoors as it was an outdoor variety but I didn’t know any better).

I grew it for a year or so and then had better varieties.  Although I did buy 100 more seeds of it a decade later from Dutch Passion directly for a breeding project with a local cutting (Papaya) that was a cross of Purple Star, Master Kush and Skunk #1 (first two from Dutch Passion, the last from Sensi Seeds) which some friends made in the late 90’s while going to the UoG (also the creators of Special G, the mother of Purple G).

I was so proud at the time but laugh looking back as these buds were basically an entire plant after a month or two of vegging.  I yielded maybe 2 ounces in total after a 2 month flowering time.  The pots were too small, I chronically underwatered, the ventilation was non existent in the closet, humidity was through the roof, they were over fertilized I struggled with nute lock out for years until I met another local grower who told me we had to filter the water as the calcium was just shy of 0.8 EC from the limestone the groundwater percolated through.

What were your first beans that you popped?  What trials and tribulations do you remember?  Did you name your plants (all mine had names, the only one I remember was MLF, My Little Freak; the runt of the litter)?

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[Racky]

All Gas OG

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[Somatek]

Is this the same All Gas OG you’ve posted elsewhere or have you been growing it for awhile?

[Cannabliss]

Ahhh nostalgic vibes in the air! 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
I’m going to dig em up on my pc. Nothing like what you have there my good man. That there is memory lane gold! Pictures in hand from a developed roll of 🎞 actual film 🔥🔥
I’ve had some purple glow adventures tho lol

[Cannabliss]

This is it.. 2 bag seeds. I literally had nothing. I bought a cheap 2×2 on ebay, and I had a flood light in a desk lamp poking through the roof port. Oh this is worse than mom busting out the old school pics to the old girlfriends LMAO

Topped one & found nuts.

The other finished out under a spider farmer sf1000 with some blurple bar lights under like it was doing anything.

It was pretty crispy in the end. I didn’t know better.

[Somatek]

Come on now, underlighting with blurples gives that cool futuristic look.  Who cares if it’s effective as long as it looks good, style over substance is pretty much the beginner motto lol.  It really is like mom pulling out the family pics lol

[Atom]

Heres my first plant grown with med card. Was 35 grams dried. This one was agent orange

[Atom]

[Somatek]

Solid choice of genetics for your first grow and it looks like a well loved little girl.

[Atom]

There was a breeder in the area who sold these boxes full of like 15 different strain. I knew someone who had one and that’s the one I chose. I’d definitely like to see what I could do with it now. That was actually grown in mericle gro. First and only time I did. So much have I learned since then.

[Somatek]

I was trying to remember if it was Subcool or Mizz Jill that bred Agent Orange but the original breeders slipped my mind.  I’d hope we’ve all learned a lot since these first girls but all things considered that’s a plant to be proud of for your first time.  At least you used fertilizers when a lot of beginners think they can throw a seed in soil under a light and have magically have the primo bud fill the room

[Cannabliss]

Those are some great looking gals!

[Nate]

My first legal grow started in a spacebucket (I did two small closet grows like 15 years ago, but I don’t have any pics of that one).

I had a ton of issues, probably over watered, too low humidity, etc., etc.

I then was given another plant that a friend of my wife’s couldn’t take care of.

It was super stretched out, and I had to nurse it back to health.

I also ended up getting spider mites from a plant from Walmart or home Depot or something. I used a really shitty insecticide that burned my plants before I found safer’s insecticidal soap (which worked).

 

I was then given my current tent so I moved into that instead of the spacebucket.

 

 

 

 

[Cannabliss]

Nice recovery. Awesome Venus fly trap as well. Always wanted one.

[Nate]

You had mentioned the Venus fly trap in my post, and I just remembered that I had a pic of a friend’s massive ass Venus fly trap:

[Cannabliss]

WOW! 😍

[Somatek]

That’s impressive, they don’t really do well around here but I’ve thought about having some picture plants in my grow for natural bug control, plus carnivorous plants are bad ass.

[Nate]

I know right? I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. She’s been working on small terrarium style grows (not cannabis, mostly succulents and other small houseplants) through the pandemic. She was telling me about how you have to follow the seasonal needs of them but I can’t remember exactly what it was they need.

[Somatek]

Ask her to join the forums and teach us the ways of growing killer plants so our plants are more killer lol.

[Nate]

Lol I’ll give it a shot. No promises though haha.

[Nate]

I was trying to post the finish earlier, but I was getting a weird error on it, so I’ll try again on my PC.

Here’s some pics of the finish. I went away for 4 days near the end of flower and they wilted pretty bad, and almost died. The one on the right hermed pretty bad, and that one eded up full of seed, and the other one got some seed, but not too bad.

I forgot to mention that the left one was Northern Lights that some kind redditor sent me seeds of, and the the one given to me was an unknown strain that I took to calling Oliver Twist since it was an orphan lol.

As far as the venus fly trap, I had it in there to catch fungus gnats lol.

[Somatek]

I get that weird error message occasionally saying the post was restricted as a threat or something.  Glad you got it sorted as those are lovely flowers well deserving of praise.

[Somatek]

Nice to see the progression from bucket to tent, sounds like the first plant was a huge learning experience between the humidity, stretch and bugs.  Kudos for keeping it all together despite the set backs.

[Nate]

For sure a huge learning experience. It definitely showed me how much I had to learn lol.

[Loves2Trim]

My Profile pic… Started 12 Blue Magoo Cookies non fem. Ended up with 7 girls. Botanicare Veg & Bloom With some other Botanicare addons. Totaled 1.8 Lbs. Not bad for my first try.

[Somatek]

Very nice, goes to show how much the tech and knowledge has improved to make the hobby more accessible.  Botanicare is pricey but works well and produces really nice terps.

[Nate]

That’s wild for a first time! Not bad is putting it mildly haha.

[Cannabliss]

Oh hell yea! Heck of a first run.

[Atom]

Wow L2T looks great. Nice and full of towers

[Keith]

This was just from a few months ago.  I was so proud.

[Somatek]

As you should be, that’s a solid bud for your first time growing.

[Loves2Trim]

unfortunately i havent been able to replicate that lol

Nice work everybody!

[Somatek]

That damn beginners luck.  Any idea why not, like that was a particular heavy yielding variety, or still trying to figure out the secret?

[Racky]

All Gas OG just before harvested

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[Racky]

4 and half ounces. Had to harvest early due to the northern weather and what not

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[Somatek]

Looks great and that’s definitely the right call this time of year as it’s not worth risking once the weather turns cold and wet like we’ve had the last couple weeks

[Keith]

I’ve still never weighed either of my harvests.  I think I’m going to weigh it tonight and see what I have.  I had 2 plants.  What’s a decent average harvest for 2 plants? I let them veg for 8 weeks to try to get them bigger, but they were only in 3 gallon pots.

[Somatek]

I’d only worry about recording and tracking your own yields to see if they’re getting better.  There’s too many variables between grows, varieties and grower priorities to make comparing yields between growers all that usable.

All that being said, the best way to compare yields is by looking at the relevant factors; grams produced, wattage used and amount of time in flower (ie grams/watt/30 days) with a good yield being 0.5g/watt/30 days which works out to 2lbs per thousand watts.  Although modern lights can easily push double that if run properly, so as a beginner learning, .5g/w/30days is a good benchmark to aim for.

[Atom]

Wanted to show off some of my first outdoor that I had pictures. I had 2 seasons before this but never took any pictures. Please forgive the quality of images, these were taken on an old blackberry.

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[Somatek]

Nice girls, they must have yielded well by the looks of their structure

[Atom]

Yeah they were quite nice thanks man, about 10-12oz. Back then I was relaying on my outdoor alot as I didn’t turn get indoor going until I had it all dried, pretty much just had one indoor crop in winter then got stuff grown to nice sized, ready to go outdoor. I got so frustrated with mold loss, I mean I spent alot of time with these plants and it hurt. I decided I had enough and invested in indoor leds and tent set ups. Best decision I ever made. Before I got tents i just had a hand build set-up with panda film. Wasn’t a great set up but it worked.

[Somatek]

That’s a pretty common progression, especially for medical users who need not only a constant but consistent selection to meet their needs, which often aren’t met by commercial growers, either legal or illegal.

[NeuroticTurtle]

not my first crop but the only decent budshot I found from recently… this one grew one main and that was almost it.

 

 

and then there was this funky lookin little almost bonsai thing which was probably the worst, which if I recall correctly was a bottom clone of Blackberry Platinum OG.  Probably couldn’t even afford dirt at this point so it never got repotted out of the 3L pot.

I think both the top bud and this whole plant were about equal weights but I can’t find my notes on that.

I’ll have to dig up an older harddrive for the first grows, I’ll let you know if that surfaces.

[NeuroticTurtle]

found this old pic too, from before I switched to LED, was still using a mix of old HPS and MH.  I think a total of 650 watts nominal for a 4×4, but the bulbs were literally secondhand, so …. 70-80% output at best.  Photo is from a plant vegged before I got around to topping, and flowered while I was away from them for the first 3 weeks and had someone looking after it.  So it never got topped, let alone defoliated.  Pretty sure I was still giving them GH Floraduo and probably not enough of that either, especially while I was away.

[Somatek]

The first pic reminded me of growing SoG with a field of single cola plants, hopefully you can find the older crops on the hard drives whenever you get around to searching for them.

It’s funny how dated pics taken under HID’s look now, especially seeing the bands of light if the shutter speed is too high.  Thanks for sharing your stories and pics

[NeuroticTurtle]

oh man, I found one of the canopy shots from that grow that finished itself while I was in the hospital, there’s also a “1200 watt max” blurple in the mix that I’d forgotten about.  I think it only drew 2.1 amps at most.  I think thats an 8 foot high tent… I don’t have any older photos than this on the data backups I could find.  Likely those are Black Willie plants growing to their 9-11 week flower time.  Didn’t even have light hangers, just buckets to raise up the younger plants.. lol.

[Somatek]

That completes the trifecta of lighting from a decade ago: HPS, mH and BLURPLES!!! lol  Loved those adds for “equivalent to 1000w” when it was only couple hundred drawn from the wall.  The buckets are just the cherry on top, I gotta say as much as I appreciate the slick, modern grows I definitely miss the vibe of the old school ghetto growing, DiY, wild west anarchy that use to define growing.  When I think back to the old forums and how brutal people could be, how thick skinned you needed to be to wade into conversation it really drives home how much has changed.  Thanks for sharing and the stroll down memory lane, those are some lanky girls but I have a feeling you’re more of a heady sativa grower like myself that’s happy to deal with the stretch because of the buzz associated with it.  Always a pleasure and thanks again for sharing.

[NeuroticTurtle]

lol, I didn’t even take photos of the first grows back in the 2000’s, I don’t think I had a working camera, let alone cameraphone til way later.

I grow weird sativas for their thcv content, so yeah, I’m quite happy to deal with stretch… if I’m around, for that particular grow they leapt up from waist high to head high while I was away from them, and the person watering didn’t really care much, so I’m just glad they got looked after at all.

To be honest, I haven’t ordered any new original black willie beans since upgrading from a different brand’s 468watt quantum style board to the SE7000’s 730 watt draw but even that was enough to stop the worst of the early stretch I was seeing in lots of my plants.  That, along with some light hangers and a measuring stick, and much much later a lux sensor.

Fast forward to modern times … I got some GDP x BW coming up, but they’re gonna be a different animal again from the original BW’s vietnamese black x nepali heritage, as one is hyb leaning and the other is the flat out indica pheno from the GDP parent.  Probably won’t stretch more than 1.5x. and I already topped the precocious one.  I think my night time temps are finally dipping to 70F from the concrete floors, so I might see some nice purpling this grow, but I’d have to check the logger for my nightly lows.  If the thcv victory doesn’t pan out either, I’ll try royal thcv and then palmera thcv, so I can plan for a lot more sativa action before even going back to the black willie.

here’s two BW topped and vegged for a bit before the flip, under the older I.F. Lighting Equinox 1000 I had going, looks like this is before I started defoliating. so the pic is old, but not terribly ancient, I’m still new to min-maxing my output.  I used to be lazy and tolerate ‘natural’ growth patterns for my plants, but these days I’ll wrangle them into whatever shape is most convenient for the tent, conditions, and lighting…. next year I’ll get a trellis.

[Somatek]

Yep, the idea of snapping pics casually 20 years ago was far too paranoia inducing, even getting film develop was bad enough.  Which has carried  through to today as I still don’t snap many pics of my grow or flower room unless I’m reminded lol.

BW x Vietnam Black was a classic from the CW/OG days back when cbay was a thing.  There was some wild genetics on there, I remember grabbing a pack of Cream Sodica from SoL which probably would have been good outdoors but was just a small/super dense quick flowering plant inside.

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