Awesome album from a great band, in fact just check the originating page at http://icoulddietomorrow.blogspot.com/2008/07/farside-monroe-doctrine.html and read up on the info if and even if you aren’t acquainted with the energy that was Farside. They were from California, it was the 90′s, times were tough but energy high.

Perhaps check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farside, also.

The Farside are no longer with us, as they broke up in 2000. However, ‘Popeye’ Vogelsang, the singer of Farside and Jeff Caudill of Gameface are in a group called Your Favorite Trainwreck. http://yourfavoritetrainwreck.com/

Haven’t listened to them yet, I’m sure they sound nothing like Farside or Gameface, but that’s not the point. If it’s cool, perhaps I’ll post it up =)

Until then, and even still, enjoy The Monroe Doctrine.

Download link for the full album, right here: http://www.mediafire.com/?bhnzgyzoxmp

Boom.

If you weren’t aware, here at the Temple of Boo (ToB for short, which is just a pseudonym for the dwelling in which I live with my boo) we’re quite the fan of photography. So much so, that about a year ago we devoted a large chunk of a very loving donation we received to the purpose of acquiring a DSLR camera. Pentax K-X, nice, and very affordable. Unfortunately, the telephoto lens will have to wait as our resources couldn’t quite fit that bill.

However, even though we can’t make use of telephoto macro shots (which we just adore), we can still appreciate other peoples work with the same method.

So, check out that link, if you appreciate pictures like this one.

Now, there are only a handful of pictures at said link, but they’re definitely worth the look. And if you have an appetite for more, just google telephoto macro shots or telephoto close-ups and you’re sure to find a wealth of beauty =)

Swiftly,
Basil O.

http://www.igrowhydro.com/InfoSheets/InfoSheet-AzatrolPatrol.pdf

I came across this looking for some information on root aphids. Random googling, you know the drill.

I thought this info sheet was fairly informative, and enlightening. I did not know that Azatrol could be used in dilution rates like 1-2 ounces per 20 gallons for reservoir use. In fact, I haven’t double checked that information, so that could possibly be incorrect. I say that because it seems a lower dilution rate than any other ~1.5% Azadirachtin product that I’ve seen. I’ll do some more research and hammer this one out.

As far as I knew, purified neem products like AzaMax, Azatrol and Azasol had a dilution rate of more like 1-2 ounces per gallon. And as far as I could calculate with those dilution ratios, refined neem products that can be used in reservoirs would cost some serious money to run in your reservoir. Note that Purified Hydrophobic Extract of Neem Oil (PHENO) is not the same type of product as these newer AzaMax, AzaSol, Azatrol products.

PHENO type products include Garden Safe brand Neem Oil Extract, which I use, and costs about $15 a quart. It’s more affordable, but more old-school, and cannot be used the same way with reservoir treatment without careful consideration and testing. The newer Neem extracts, the ones that actually list Azadirachtin as an ingredient (Garden Safe brand Neem Oil Extract says nothing of Azadirachtin), are far less oily, and therefor less likely to clog the leaves stomata or coat the roots in superfluous oil.

For example, if you went out to your local hydroponics shop, or went online and bought a quart of General Hydroponics AzaMax, it would set you back $50, at least. Most stores list it $10-$20 more. Since a quart is 16 ounces, and if you used an ounce per gallon dilution ratio, you would need that whole quart for just 16 gallons of solution in your reservoir. For $50? Please.

I see a discrepancy here.

On the GH Blog, a particular page I’m looking at here titled How To Use AzaMax, located here http://www.generalhydroponics.com/blog/2010/10/26/how-to-use-azamax/, says to use 1 ounce per gallon.
Looking at that information sheet from igrowhydro.com, AzaMax can be used at a dilution rate of 1-2 tablespoons per gallon, and used once every other week once control has been achieved.

That looks like conflicting information. However, you just have to figure out what works for you. I’ve heard from a source, one I can’t remember, that even very low levels of neem compounds can be effective against pests. So, should you use 1-2 tablespoons per gallon or 1-2 ounces per gallon of this stuff? Well, I’d say go on the lighter side. See how it works, and if your pest problem persists, double the dose. That should do the trick. I’ve had a ounce-per-gallon old school neem oil spray method that’s never done me wrong, and has controlled spider mites, aphids, caterpillars, and whatever other non-beneficials I didn’t know I had that were killed off in the process.

I like the idea of those products, they’re just out of my price range. It would seem simpler to run the product in your reservoir, but then you do have to use more to get the job done. However, it would also help control soil-dwelling insects, or for those growing hydro (like us), medium-dwelling insects. I’m not sure if foliar applications of neem products would be enough to control root-zone insects effectively. In fact, if it does work, it hasn’t for me, because I’ve been using neem for that last couple of years as a foliar spray, and it’s never driven away those little critters.

In our indoor grow, for the last couple of years (perhaps even since we started growing cannabis indoors) we’ve been experiencing the occupation in our root zone of some type of creepy-crawly insect. We’ve never been sure what it is, and it’s one of our only recurring pests indoors.

We’re not even sure if it’s a problem, but we know it’s there. If we had a telephoto lens on our DSLR we could take some pictures and examine them, but unfortunately we don’t have a telephoto lens for a nice macro shot, and they’re just too tiny to shoot otherwise!

Perhaps we should ‘squish’ a few, to look at them under the 30x magnifying scope that we have. I only suggest to squish them because those little fuckers are like flies and won’t stop moving unless they’re eating. Good luck getting them to eat under examination.

I believe they’re gray? Definitely not arachnids/spider-mites. They live and die in the root zone. I’ve never ever seen one on the plant, aside from on top of the roots. They have 6 legs, and little antennae.

I have noticed that when our ebb and flow system floods, many of them get pulled out of the root-zone and down into the reservoir. Then they just lay on the skin of the water, unable to move, and die. It’s just another thing I’d rather avoid.

Who knows, maybe my intermittent use of neem hasn’t been constant enough to ward them off. Maybe they would die out if we were more vigilant about destroying them through their life cycle. I have no idea what they would feed on in our root zone, as we use coco and perlite as a medium. That’s what makes me suspect that they’re eating the roots, and damaging the plants, even those they seem to show no signs of stress from it. They have to eat something, and our media is inert.

What gives?

Anyways, read up on neem. It’s wonderfully effective on many things. You’ll find peer-reviewed studies that suggest that it doesn’t work in as many instances as it can, and I believe that just comes down to methodology, and the circumstances present in the grow.

I’ve never found anything that was as effective and innocuous at such a great price, as we pay around $15 for a quart of hydrophobic extract of neem oil. We pick it up at Lowes currently.

We use a dilution rate of 1 tablespoon per gallon, which comes out to less than a teaspoon per quart. We mix a up a quart of the solution and use it all that day, and once a week, or every other week. Simple =)

Gots to go, the day is calling!
<3Basil

It’s an interesting article with a few useful graphs explaining the relationship between dissolved oxygen levels and water temperature in hydroponic applications.

I stumbled across that article just now while looking for some hard scientific numbers and analysis on the subject.

There seems to be more in my head to say, although it wont quite come out so easily at the moment. I believe I’m tired, and as such, must retreat.
<3Basil

Here’s the direct link. http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/profiles.htm

There’s a somewhat magical ratio in there, referring to the amount of General Hydroponics Flora Series fertilizers to use to sustain healthy, optimal cannabis growth indoors under HID lighting. The ratio is 7.5 (round up to 8 for ease) ml per gallon of GH FloraMicro, and 15ml per gallon of GH FloraBloom.

This ratio can also be described in shorthand as 0G-8M-15B, referring to the three-part system of the Flora Series, using 0 ml’s of FloraGro, 8ml’s of FloraMicro and 15ml of FloraBloom per gallon. Some people refer to this formula as the Lucas Formula, arrived to by someone on a cannabis forum of said name. Anyway, the name doesn’t matter, it’s the ratio that does.

That nice little ratio right there gives us these ballpark PPM figures. (These PPM figures represent elemental PPM values, which are different than those measured by TDS/EC)

100N-100P-200K-60Mg
In other words…

• 100 PPM Nitrogen
• 100 PPM Phosphorous
• 200 PPM Potassium
• 60 PPM Magnesium

Now I know that there are more elements than these that are needed to grow good bud, however, these numbers are the most important since they are needed in higher quantities than other mineral elements like Sulfer, Calcium, and the trace elements. Using a complete hydroponic mineral fertilizer like the Flora Series from General Hydroponics will contain all the mineral elements needed for optimal plant, and bud growth.

To let pH explain it in their own words, here’s an excerpt from that page that describes it all.

A Grower’s Project
Several years ago I undertook a project to find which hydroponic nutrient profile(s) produced the highest cannabis yield. The project ended after 10 years and more than 25 crops. I was that convinced of the control nutrients gave me, and just as determined not to let the project end until I proved it to myself. That never happened. As a starting point I set out to collect as many published cannabis nutrient profiles as I could find. To my surprise I could only find two sets of recommended cannabis profiles, one published by Mel Frank in his Marijuana Grower’s Insider’s Guide, the other by pH Imbalance (no relation to myself) in his MJ Growers Handbook, both are shown further below.

Stage of Growth
The first thing you’ll notice about the profiles is that they change according to the stage of growth for the crop, three stages for those in the Marijuana Grower’s Insider’s Guide, and four for those in the MJ Growers Handbook. While three or four reservoir changes aren’t unusual for a hydroponic grower to endure, I’ve seen many stage of growth schedules recommended by individuals and fertilizer manufacturers that called for more, some as often as every week (for a typical 90 day crop that’s 13 reservoir changes). A nutrient solution is generally changed for two reasons. Primarily, to prevent its profile from becoming dangerously depleted or out of balance from overuse, secondly, because the grower simply wanted to change the nutrient profile in order to follow a certain stage of growth schedule even if the solution still has the better part of its life remaining.

A grower should be aware that anyone recommending a reservoir change every week without knowing the size of the reservoir and the area of growth it supports is probably playing it safe at the grower’s expense for both labor and fertilizer costs (for more information on reservoir changes see this nutrient solution management article). Going on the assumption that the stage of growth recommendations produced acceptable results, the project included as many as twelve reservoir changes and as few as three (including the initial first mix) even though the size of the reservoir and the growth it supports dictate that only three changes were required. I found no difference in yields, but I did spend more time working harder and using more fertilizer than I needed to whenever more than three reservoir changes were made.

More is Better?
The second thing you’ll notice about the profiles is that some are much stronger than others, with the growth stage formulas being the strongest. However, even within the same stage of growth the authors don’t seem to be of the same mind. This suggests that cannabis produces equally well under a wide range of nutrient strengths and profiles, and that using more is not necessarily better when using less gives the same results as using more.

The nutrient profiles used during this project varied according to Mel Frank’s recommendations for both moderate and strong light gardens. It was discovered that using 250ppm N during the growth stage produced no faster growth nor higher yields than using the 100ppm N found in his flowering profile (the one highlighted red in the For Flowering section below), and that the same flowering profile could also be used during the first two weeks of growth. It became apparent that using growth stage as a prerequisite for managing a cannabis crop’s nutrient profile was not only overstated, but strengths and profiles were overstated as well. While this may not be the case with other hydroponically grown crops such as tomatoes, it does suggest that cannabis has simpler needs than many people and fertilizer manufactures advocate. In fact, using his 100N-100P-200K-60Mg flowering profile for all stages of growth with just three reservoir changes produced the same yields as twelve reservoir changes and stronger profiles did. Doing less and using less produced the same results as doing more and using more.

So, there you have it, an honest approach at hacking General Hydroponics nutrients for the purpose of balance.

What we can learn from this is that you don’t have to follow the simple yet complicated feeding schedule that either General Hydroponics or any other hydroponic nutrient company publishes. For example, here’s the current feeding schedule for the Flora Series (simple recirculating) that GH posts online at their website.

GH Flora Series Simple Recirculating Chart

I know it’s not entirely ridiculous, but seriously, a reservoir change every week with fresh water and nutrients? That seems an inefficient, or at least sub-optimal way of maintaining a nutrient solution. And to boot, most reservoir changes will require a different ratio of nutrients, which in most cases is completely unnecessary. I can attest to the fact that this 8M:16B recipe works fantastically, as I’ve grown some real sugar-frosty hard buds with JUST that recipe. No additives. You could even hit or break the 1 gram per watt barrier with only GH FloraMicro and FloraBloom.

So, here’s a question for all you hydroponic cannabis growers out there. If you could minimize, possibly even cut directly in half the amount of time, money and effort you use to put into your grow, would you? I know I would, and I know that this is what I’m going to do.

Currently, I’ve been changing my reservoir every week, partly to play it safe. In our flower room, we have a 3×3′ canopy, utilizing only a 12 gallon reservoir. That small reservoir is most of the reason I change the solution every week. If I had a properly sized reservoir, around 25 gallons, I could easily go for 2 weeks without changing it out.

There’s a lot of information to take in from the CannaStats website, and it will take time for some of it to sink in so that you fully comprehend it in a way that suits you. However, there is much freedom located within those pages.

One more example from CannaStats is this page, http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/nutrientsolutionmgmt.htm, which is an excellent starting point for understanding the useful life of your nutrient solution. Here’s a lovely little excerpt to wet your appetite and make you wish you had known all along how to properly manage your res!

Some things to consider about a water uptake based strategy and proactive management…..

• Water uptake based management self-adjusts to the stage of growth and environmental variables affecting water use.
• At a reservoir size of 3 gallons/sq ft….

- solution life at peak crop water demand (when plants are largest) lasts appx 15-20 days
- solution life at new crop water demand (when plants are smallest) lasts appx 35-50 days
- 90 day crops seldom require more than 3 reservoir changes

• Reservoir life ends with a TDS of approximately 75% that of the starting TDS (depending on source water)

- minus 25% TDS tends to coincide with the point at which buffering power is about to be lost and pH begins to become unstable

• When proactively adding back plain water….

- time spent mixing nutrients or making pH/TDS adjustments is limited to only the original mixing session.
- anyone who can pour water to a full line can maintain a crop in your absence.

One REALLY important little bit to chew on is this.

- 90 day crops seldom require more than 3 reservoir changes

That’s right, pH said it, and with correct nutrient solution management, it can be done. Commercial hydroponic setups don’t dump their solution every week, or even every other week. Sometimes they’ll keep it for the whole life of the crop.

And always, remember, Cannabis is a VERY hardy plant, and very tolerant. Just keep the basics under control, lighting, atmosphere, root zone conditions, pH, and you can grow great plants. Even the best and most technologically advanced nutrient recipe will grow bunk plants if not managed properly.

Soon I’ll have some more blogs about nutrient solution management and nutrients in general, utilizing further information from the CannaStats web site. Also, I’ve got some great university studies of hydroponic food cultivation that I’d love to share with you. So, if nerdy numbers and quantifiable practical results are your thing, be sure to check in soon for a blog on Silica! Yes, the second most abundant element in the earths crust is freaking phenomenal when it comes to its effects on plants.

Until then, keep it growing, keep it lit.

<3 Basil

I’ve been really busy lately, and although I haven’t been able to post more often I can at least keep you up with some of my activities and goings on. One thing I’ve been investing much time is our hydroponics setup over here at the Temple of Boo (ToB). In particular, its our hydro setup for our indoor medical cannabis grow. I can honestly say that its a real blessing to be able to grow such a miraculous plant.

Anyways, so what about our hydroponics have I been involved in? Well, aside from general maintenance of the girls (cuts, moms, sinsemilla buds), I’ve been pecking away at spreadsheets analyzing the cost of our hydroponic nutrient solutions.

I do this because it helps me figure out how much I’m actually spending on nutrients per gallon of nutrient solution. Here’s a simple example to illustrate my point. Recently Codalion and I purchased a 2.2pound (1 kilogram) bag of both General Hydroponics MaxiGro and MaxiBloom. If we wanted to calculate how much it costs to make ‘N’ gallons of nutrient solution with a certain dose of MaxiBloom, we could easily do that with a simple algebraic formula. If that sounds more complicated than it is, don’t worry, it’s very simple!

For example, say we wanted to make just one gallon of nutrient solution with our GH MaxiBloom dry nutrient. Using a standard dose recommended by their online feeding charts, we would use 5 grams (1 teaspoon*) of GH MaxiBloom. It works out like this.

You take the price of the nutrient, in our case, around $15 for the smaller 2.2 pound (1 kilogram) bag of MaxiBloom, and divide it by the volume or weight of the nutrient. In this example, since we’re using a dry nutrient blend we would use a measure of weight, and since I adore the metric system for its ease of calculation, we will be using grams as our unit of measure for weight. If we were using a liquid nutrient, we would instead use milliliters as our unit of measure, since you measure liquid by volume and not by weight.

(Price of Nutrient) divided by (Weight in grams) equals…

($15) / (1000 grams) =  15/1000 = 0.015 = $0.015 per gram.

There we have it, part of our calculation is complete. Per gram of nutrient, the GH MaxiBloom costs 1.5 cents per gram, or $0.015 per gram. So, using a standard 5g dose would be 5 x $0.015, which equals $0.075, or 7.5 cents. That’s pretty good, almost 8 cents per gallon. Cost effective that mix is, which is precisely why we bought it.

As a further example, if we wanted to make the same concentration of nutrient solution, only this time for a 12 gallon reservoir, we would easily take the numbers garnered thus far and merely calculate further.

(Cost of Nutrient Solution per Gallon) multiplied by (Number of gallons of solution required) = N
(7.5 cents) x (12 gallons) = ($.075) x (12) = $0.9

And there we have some more numbers, this time calculating that to make 12 gallons of nutrient solution with a standard 5g dose of GH  MaxiBloom, it costs us around 90 cents. For a robust mineral fertilizer, the General Hydroponics Maxi series do come at an incredible value. Say you were running an 8 week crop in a 12 gallon reservoir using this 5gram/1gal ratio of Maxi series nutrients. That comes out to be $0.90 x 8 , which is an easy $7.20. That’s a really good deal for 8 weeks worth of 12 gallons of  nutrient solution per week. Comparatively, we can see that the standard bloom dose for the GH Flora series calculates as follows.

(These calculations assume a cost of $30 per gallon of each nutrient blend at standard hydro store prices. Your local prices will vary.)

GH FloraGro, FloraMicro, FloraBloom = $30 / 3785ml = $0.0079260237780713. Okay, let’s make that a bit more concise and round down to 5 decimal places. That leaves us with $0.00793, or .793 cents per milliliter of each GH Flora series 1 gallon container.

Using the standard 1-2-3 (5ml-10ml-15ml) ratio of grow-micro-bloom, we are presented with these numbers.

GH FloraGro: 5ml = $0.03965, or about 4 cents.
GH FloraMicro: 10ml = $0.0793, or about 8 cents.
GH FloraBloom: 15ml = $0.11895, or about 12 cents.

This seems too easy. It is. Tallying up those numbers, we’re left with 4 + 8 + 12 cents, which comes out to 24 cents. $0.24 to make 1 gallon of GH Flora series liquid nutrients. For a 12 gallon reservoir (a standard size i use for smaller grows), that’s $2.88. For 8 weeks worth of that nutrient solution, replenished once per week, works out to be $23.04.

I’m obligated to inform you at this portion of the blog that even though these are standard doses for different series of bloom nutrient formulations, they are not equal. There are some things to clear up hear I suppose.

For whatever reason, the standard 5g dose of MaxiBloom comes out to be 472ppm, as calculated from the % of elements in the guaranteed analysis section of the label, and the ratio required. I must say, it’s a rather light dose. I certainly wouldn’t grow cannabis on a restricted diet like that. Now, the standard 5ml-10ml-15ml (grow-micro-bloom) Flora series blend is around 836 ppm. With a quick glance you can easily identify that the standard dose recommended for MaxiBloom is about half the PPM of the Flora series 5-10-15 dose. Now, I admit that on the label of the GH MaxiBloom it says:

“Use mild strength nutrient for delicate plants and full strength nutrient for robust plants.”

However, the (recirculating) feeding schedule on the GH website for the Maxi series shows that throughout the life of the plant, 5 grams, or 1 teaspoon is the amount of base nutrient to use. That seems far too low. Now, I’ve realized something that needs some explaining. (Really?). Yes, bear with me.

The rate of application, or dose, of some nutrients made by General Hydroponics are inconsistent with (at least) their newer feeding schedules. There is a reason for this. Example. The Flora series. Standard bloom dose is 5ml grow, 10ml micro, and 15ml bloom. Cool. Then you look at the feeding schedule on their website, and the highest dose in bloom is 2.5ml grow, 7.5ml micro, 12.5ml bloom. That’s (5+10+15) versus (2.5+7.5+12.5), or a dosage difference of 30ml versus 22.5ml of nutrient per gallon of solution. Why this inconsistency? Well, if you notice on the feeding schedule, both the Keep it Simple and Advanced schedules include the use of General Hydroponics KoolBloom, NPK of 0-10-10. That’s the difference right there, the inclusion of a concentrated mineral bloom booster to offset the lower-PPM values of the lower strength (2.5-7.5-12.5) base fertilizer solution. If you want to keep it simple, and rely solely on the Flora series for your PPM’s, then you would use the instructions on the label of the bottle. The listed dosage rates on the bottles of the Flora series are designed to be followed if you are using either none or little other NPK additives. It seemed a bit confusing at first to me, but I realize the reason for the apparent discrepancy in listed fertilizer doses.

Now, getting back to where we started, the Maxi Series. MaxiBloom in particular. We ran some numbers on a 5 gram per gallon dose of MaxiBloom. Now, using a spreadsheet to calculate the PPM’s of any given dose of fertilizer, I find that 5 grams of MaxiBloom is only 472ppm — wayy too light for my girls! I’m not sure that I would even run lettuce at a PPM that low. Yea, you know what, I wouldn’t. 1000ppm to me works for most any plant, so I like to stick around those ranges. Noting that the container of MaxiBloom gives a dose of 5-10grams, or 1-2 teaspoons, we can easily ramp up the dose by doubling the amount. 10 grams of GH MaxiBloom gives us 944 PPM, which is just about right on with our 1000ppm rule of thumb.

That last value I worked out is much closer to the 836ppm dose of the 5-10-15ml Flora series. In fact, at 944ppm we’ve effectively surpassed it. So, the 5-10-15ml Flora series dose runs us $0.24, and a max-dose (10g) of MaxiBloom is $0.15. Not as much of a price difference now that we know the MaxiBloom has to be used at 2x application rate previously thought. One strange thing to note is the feeding schedule of GH Maxi series. http://generalhydroponics.com/site/gh/docs/feeding_sched/GH-MaxiSeries-Charts.pdf

Check it out. You’ll see that max rated dose is 1 teaspoon, or 5 grams. Thats only 472ppm. Keeping in mind that dose is designed to be used alongside KoolBloom, we can factor in those PPM’s as well. That 5ml dose of KoolBloom only ups the ante by 167 PPM, leaving us at 639 ppm. That’s still rather light, especially for hungry hungry plants like my cannabis girls. I’d say a more reasonable dose to keep around the 1000ppm mark would be 7grams of MaxiBloom and 5ml per gallon of KoolBloom. That would give you about 829 ppm, which is sooo close to 836ppm dose of the Flora series 5-10-15ml dose. Perfect. Now all I’ve gotta do is get some KoolBloom and I’ll be on my way. Currently we’re running ~945ppm (active elements) with the 10gram/gal dose of MaxiBloom, keepin it real simple.

Oh, if you’d like to know how I calculate nutrient ppm’s with spreadsheets, it’s really easy. You can either do straight calculations in a new spreadsheet, or download the CannaStats PremixPPM spreadsheet and fill it out to easily calculate. The CannaStats spreadsheet may be found on their download page, which is located here: http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/download.htm

I use LibreOffice to edit and manage my spreadsheets and other office documents. It’s free, and open source. Get it here: http://www.libreoffice.org/

Alright folks, that about does it for now. There’s quite a bit more to talk about on nutrients, ppm’s, calculating and analyzing costs, but we’ll get to more of that later. One good website to soak up and share in the meantime is the CannaStats website, which you can find at http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/

Soon I’ll have to upload my revised spreadsheet of the PremixPPM spreadsheet found at CannaStats. I’ve updated the prices, and added in the Nute-O-Rama stats to the spreadsheet. Come to think of it, that spreadsheet and the Nute-O-Rama nutrient list could use some major upgrades. Perhaps I’ll have some ready for the next time we meet again.

Until then, happy growing, and happy medicating.

<3Basil O.

So we grow Cannabis. Indoors. It’s fun. Great way to stay in shape. Seriously though, it’s enormously profitable. And I’m not talking about cash money, I’m talking about the sheer amount of buds you can grow year round utilizing what can be referred to as controlled environment agriculture. It’s like it sounds, everything in under your control. If something happens, it’s because of you and the decisions you choose to make. There’s more risk involved in that respect, but the advantages of modern affordable electronics have changed what a ‘risk’ might be considered.

Modern Electronics Save the Day, Once Again

I consider not growing indoors a risk, somewhat because of current prohibitionist legislation, even in the progressive west of California territory. The other part of the risk is the environment, sun comes and goes when it does, as do the clouds. There are no clouds of anything in my indoor grow rooms, and my lights are at my command. That makes a world of difference. Since we run our cannabis plants in such a short cycle (1-2 weeks veg, 8 weeks bloom), and since we also have separate veg and flower rooms, we can pull 6 seasons of harvest every year (12 months divided by 2 month bloom cycles = 6).

Outdoors with no artificial lights, no auto-closing tents, and no auto-flowering cannabis varieties, you would have just one season to harvest.

Behold, a Sea of Green

Moving on, because we require so much medicinal cannabis, we also require many plants to grow this cannabis. We utilize a Sea of Green (SoG) type method, where we keep our plants small and we have a lot of them. With our current change in container size, we can hold around 36 plants per square meter in our flower room. Because of our high plant density, we need a full stock of cuttings to mature into thick and stinky buds.

Our conventional method of vegetative propagation has been the all-too-reliable humidity dome on your standard 1020 propagation tray. We’ve used many varieties of medium in which to root our cuttings, at the moment we’re using Root Riot plugs made by Hydrodynamics International. I believe we’ve tried these in the past, and just as then I am now quite satisfied with their performance. We’ve used Grodan rockwool 1.5″ cubes for many years, however I decided it was time for a change to something that holds more air and doesn’t have the capacity to become so water-logged. The Root Riot plugs have a great moisture to air ratio, and its really spongy (mmm, airspace!) and keeps its shape well, unlike rockwool cubes.

Root Riot Package

Optimal Oxygenation, the Key to Root Performance.

Those little Root Riot plugs are pretty badass, so much so that I would say they’re ideal for vegetative propagation or seed starting of any kind. However, there is one optimization that we can make here, and that means the inclusion of a water-based medium-less propagation method. The bubble cloner. The reason it is called such is because the entire method of this type of propagation is based on the water being highly oxygenated, full of air bubbles and spewing them so much that they spray the delicate cuttings underneath with a constant mist of water.

cannabis cuttings in the bubble cloner.

One thing to keep in mind is that the current reigning champion of water-based vegetative propagation is the aeroponic cloner. That is the type of cutting propagator that uses a decently high-powered water pump to force water through a specially-made (DIY versions are too easy) manifold which diverts the water to multiple spray nozzles with shower your cuttings underneath with a constantly changing bath of hyper-oxygenated nutrient solution. The reason the aeroponic method is more popular is because the water around the root zone is constantly changing, in fact usually very forcefully — but nothing that even a delicate cutting couldn’t withstand.

Sounds pretty savvy, however there are some things to their design that makes some people go with a less conventional bubble cloner, like the picture I’ve posted just above this paragraph.

Some of these reasons include (but are not limited to):

• Excessive heat generated by the water pump. Some growers choose to set the water pump on a timer to reduce heat, which is quite effective. 15min on/15 min off cycles using a standard mechanical segmented timer can be effective, as can be other on/off cycles. 1 min on / 5 min off would work too, based on aeroponic system methodologies.
• The actual cost of a pump, or having one lying around. The only reason I didn’t set up an aeroponic cutting propagator is because all my water pumps are currently occupied.
• Air pumps to power the bubble effect are inexpensive, can be bought in many more locations than water pumps (i.e. Wal-Mart, pet stores that don’t specialize in aquatic creatures.
• Air pumps can also be repaired if the diaphragm or other simple parts fail. Water pump failure either means you need to replace the impeller, or just buy a new pump. Keeping those things in mind, it’s much easier to DIY a solution to an air pump problem.

I’ve usually thought of aeroponic cloners to be higher performance than bubble cloners, and I’m sure most of the time they are. However, this group of cuttings I have is on day 7, and I already see a few little roots popping out from our Mendo Purp strain. I know that having tiny roots (>1cm) in an aero cloner on day 7 is kind of standard, but I’ve had some bad luck with the bubble cloning method in the past, and right now it seems to be kicking some serious ass!

Roots pop on Mendo Purp.

All I have to do is make sure the reservoir is filled with nutrient solution, manage the pH (pH of tapwater here is ~8), check to make sure the bottom of the cutting is within a centimeter or two of the water, and it’s all good. Since there’s no humidity dome, I have less fungal issues to worry about, which have shown their ugly face in the past. Also, since the water supply is so plentiful in the bubbling reservoir, I don’t have to worry about them drying out.

One important thing to keep in mind with the cheap-mans bubble cloning method is that the bottom of the cutting stems should NOT be  submerged in water. You want them suspended over the waters surface, anywhere between 1cm and 3cm. It really depends on how your interior spray is. If you have a nice strong air pump, and a nice big air stone, you’re set. In fact, I consider my goliath 4″ air stone to be absolutely key in my successful spray pattern.

Bigass air stone

If you’re unsure of the moisture level in your bubble cloner, just take of the lid and check the underside for moisture. If the underside looks completely wet, then you’re good. The movement and popping of the rapid bubbling is enough to constantly mist your plants and keep even the largest cuttings super healthy.

Underside of bubble cloner lid

So, our bubble cloner is doing well, even in the warm (~80*F) conditions of our veg room. I was concerned about the temperature of the nutrient solution and its level of dissolved oxygen, but apparently it doesn’t seem to be a problem. Perhaps in the not-too-soon future we’ll see the re-emergence of the Temple of Boo’s DIY aero cloner. I remember the last one…. roots as big as your arms!

I think that’s about it for now. I’ve got so many ideas for blogs on the brain, its crazy. Wish me the best in consolidating my knowledge and experience and being able to deliver it to you in a casual, sound, informative fashion.

Peace, cannabinoids.
<3 Basil O.

Just ran across this while doing a bit of research on the CMS I’m using here, WordPress. After a few Google searches, I came across this blog: http://paulkortman.com/2011/01/26/wordpress-vs-drupal-vs-joomla-vs-expression-engine/.

The whole of the blog and the following commentary is really where the money’s it. The blog itself is really good concise info, however the commentary provide further insight into the often confusing and cursing world of Content Management Systems. Several comments about Joomla (security, usability, compatibility, etc.) brought back fondly ridiculous memories of wrestling with that bull of a CMS.

Our Joomla Experience

I was really pushing it sometimes, with tons of extensions and plugins, slick professional templates, SEO friendliness, and it worked –most of the time. It sure could be a bitch to maintain at times. I used to run our website at theothersideofthemushroom.com, using Joomla as my choice CMS.

The Other Side of the Mushroom is a small independent (in the most urgent sense of the word) crafting outfit created by my dear Codalion and myself. We make all kinds of things, from paintings to clothes, music and photographs – we love it all. So, naturally we need a place to market these goods.

Years ago, we decided to start up a website using the Joomla CMS. We liked it because of its vast array of options and customization features, and yet we ended up hating it because of rampant compatibility and other technical issues.Our old website was really cool, in fact I wish I had a picture of how it looked in its final development days before it was scrapped, but alas I have none.

See, I’m more of a web designer, rather than a hardcore coder, so I really can’t be bothered to learn much about how to fix all of the issues that can arise from using such an open-source and universal content management system. I need something easy, something I can set and forget. Something that works how its supposed to, I guess.

One reason we liked Joomla is because of all the different shopping carts you can use for Joomla based websites. And we thought, we should use a shopping cart plugin so people can easily buy items from us and charge their credit cards or paypal accounts real easy. It sounded like a great plan. And to boot, there must be 20 free shopping cart varieties.

In my opinion, none of them are worth it. I know, they’re free — and they’re still not worth it. Issues with backing up products and categories, strange layout issues and compatibility issues with other plugins just amount to a major pain in my ass, with not much to show for it. I think of the 2 or so years we used Joomla, it was only functional as a store for perhaps 50% of that time. That’s a ridiculous amount of downtime.

WordPress Revelations

Recently, Codalion and I were talking about how best to resurrect our website, and we wondered if we should even continue to use Joomla as our CMS of choice. Codalion had recently started a blog on WordPress (on my recommendation), and I jumped back into my WordPress blog, so we wondered if we could possibly use WordPress as our choice cut of content management steak. CMS, right? Content Management Steak. Sure, that works =)

Anyways, the only thing we thought might be a problem with the transition is that we wasn’t sure of what options we would have for shopping cart extensions. Then we had a realization that came in the form of a question, as many do, and that was “”Do we need a shopping cart extension of sell our goods?”. And that was all it took to get the gears further spinning in our noggins.

What if we could cut out the fuss of a complicated and honestly risky shopping cart system, and instead rely on the solid workings of a simple blog platform? Eureka. We’ve found our solution. We could post individual products or groups of products as blog posts, in their respective categories, list prices and detailed information about the products. Whoever wanted to buy any certain product could just comment on it or email us and we’ll take it from there. We have a PayPal account so we would just log in to PayPal’s website and send the buyer a custom invoice with the transaction total and they could pay via credit card, bank card or PayPal account.

Is it really just that simple? It seems to be, at least it all works out on paper. I understand that running a small shop this way has its own inherent limitations, such as lack of mass changes to products and/or categories, but those are features we don’t even use anyways.

Codalion and I will be discussing the website for The Other Side of the Mushroom in the next couple of days and we’ll hammer out a plan for getting it back up, and this time using WordPress. We only have about 80 items so far I believe, mostly beaded necklaces and acrylic canvas paintings. That shouldn’t be too hard to get going. I could post each category of necklaces in a single post, to make things simple for myself and the end-user/buyer. Same for the paintings.

[Oh, that reminds me, we've just wet our feet with oil-based paints lately. It's been quite fun =) Working first with acrylics makes using oil paints seem effortless. There's so much more blending to be had, it's wonderful.  I should post a pic of the painting I just made. *nod*]

I suppose that’s all I have to say on this. You know, I don’t really plan most of these blog posts… I just get around to them when I do, I’m sure it kind of shows. Anyways, I wasn’t planning on posting a blog like this, but after reviewing the blog that I linked to at the beginning of the article, I thought that it might prove to be fruitful to express some of our latest business activities as of recently. Although our business has not really excelled, we’re very proud of it, and as soon as we have TOSOTM back online, I will surely inform everyone here of its re-awakening.

Like a Phoenix from the ashes, a Content Management System that doesn’t drain my life of energy and sanity.

Thank you, WordPress. Thanks for being you. It means a lot to me.

<3 Basil

My lack of uber-efficiency in life has limited me to making less blog posts than I would actually prefer. These things and more will change. I was going to follow that with “I Guarantee it”, like George Zimmerman from the Men’s Warehouse commercials? For some reason, that guy kinda creeps me out, and on the other hand, I know he supports Cannabis legalization. I’m not exactly sure why he supports it, could be in it for the money, could be a reefer-head from the 60′s, I really don’t know.

Anyways, to the point. Ebb and Flow. Cannabis. This is how we grow here, at the time being. I might be willing to step up to a full aeroponics system someday, but I would have to have a cache of cannabis in excess of half a pound dry (@ 25% moisture) just to cover any loss in harvest by failures of the system. We medicate often here, and we don’t play around when it comes to our stash. Actually, we’ve ‘played around’ much too much in the past with our grow, meaning we didn’t really have a set plan or identity of what we were doing. We just swung from tree to tree like some panicked monkey, and ended up with a real flip-flop of a bud harvest for quite some time. We would harvest some plants that would be fucking gorgeous splendor, and then some that I would rather not even have in the flower room. It was becoming quite pathetic. A few months ago though, we really put our foot down and were determined to grow as much as we possibly could, at the best possible quality, and for the best economical price.

A quick glance at our blume room!

Because of these factors, we switched our grow from a hand-watered, peat and perlite based container grow to an ebb and flow, coco-based container grow. In my experience, coconut coir is superior to peat in performance quality, especially when it comes to growing high-production, short-cycle cannabis plants. So far, it’s working quite admirably. We flood the tray once per day with a nutrient solution based on General Hydroponics Flora Series, and General Hydroponics Floralicious Plus. We don’t play around with any ‘secret sauce’ kind of bullshit recipe to get fat hard nugs. This is hydro, so pretty much 95-99% of a huge harvest is a properly applied and scientifically based nutrient formula. Like I said, here at the Temple of Boo (ToB), we rely soley on these purified minerals for most of our plants nutrition. The only additive we use is the Floralicious Plus, and that’s because it has some very time-tested and proven ingredients to stimulate plant growth, the main constituents of this being the Kelp extract (20%), and the low-molecular-weight humic acids (@ 2%), and the plant protein hydrolysate for amino acids and other beneficial things.

There are beneficial bacteria in my system, and these are ‘populated’ by whatever micro-herd is available in the Floralicious, and then in addition to that, any bacteria or fungi in my local grow environment that happen to find a home in the root system of my plants. Now, keep in mind since I set up my grow with ‘beneficials’ from the start, competing fungi and bacteria will NOT have a chance to colonize, only other complimentary fungi or bacteria can co-colonize an already colonized and well-kept-up system. Some people like to use h2o2 (hydrogen peroxide, horticultural grade) or bleach (too easily toxic to plants) to keep plants root systems devoid of any micro-organisms, beneficial or not. We do not practice this school of thought. We’ve found it more difficult and time consuming to keep up a sterile system, than to inoculate a system with micro-herd that will protect it until the day it dies. The beneficial bacteria and fungi in our system are the great protectors of our plants. In fact, coconut-based mediums are inoculated in the wild by exogenous trichoderma fungi. The presence of the trichderma could be why I’ve never seen ANY type of common house-mold growing on coco. I’ve seen many common grey/white house-molds growing on peat, but not coco.

One very important thing to think about when growing any plants is a diverse defense system for said plants. That could include many of many things. Coconut coir or pith, like I said, is already colonized by Trichoderma fungi, which is an aggressive beneficial fungi that once colonized in your medium, will remain colonized and keep other potentially-hostile fungi out of your system. That’s one of the best things about coco, it already has beneficial fungi, so make sure you’ve got some benefical bacterias as well and you’ve got yourself a fairly rounded-out defense solution for your plants. The reason I focus on fungi and bacteria, is because most diseases that will take down your plants, especially Cannabis plants, will be either bacterial or fungal. Now, if you’re using coco, you’ve got the fungi covered. I’ve used peat for years, and I’m sure that some types (if not all, who knows) might have some benefical fungi, but in practice I’ve seen wayyyy too much common grey mold growing on my peat mediums and it’s not something I like to promote.  And as far as beneficial bacteria goes, I make sure I have good ones by using a competent one-part natural-based hydroponic nutrient additive.  Floralicous Plus is known to have at least one strain of beneficial bacteria in it, Bacillus Subtilis. You’ll hear that from the sales reps at General Hydroponics. It’s one of the few ingredients they let you know is in the Floralicious Plus. It’s crazy, kinda reminds me of SuperThrive, but I know for a scientific fact it’s much more practical to use. It reminds me of superthrive in that it contains over 50 ingredients in a proprietary blend, and smells like vitamins. Superthrive doesn’t even have kelp, or humic acids, which are some of the only natural/organic additives that you can use in hydro and actually expect some results.

I’m kind of rambling this way and that, but there’s some really good info there. There are so many things I have to blog about plants, it’s fucking insane, and I wish I could just do it all right now, so you could have 1,000+ posts all about whatever cool shit is in my head. However, since I can’t possibly ramp up my number of blog posts that quickly, I can at least try at a sluggish-but-very-inspired-human pace.

Mm. One important thing I remembered that I wanted to talk about sometime is the actual price you pay per gallon of your nutrient solution. I’ll have a blog post dedicated to this subject, but it’s something I want you to think about in the meantime. I’ve set up my nutrient formula to only include a base-nutrient, and one additive. Using a specially-designed nutrient calculator, downloaded from the CannaStats website at http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/download.htm, I found that my nutrient formula equals out to around a quarter per gallon? That might not seem like much, but this is with some of the most quality and price-effective liquid hydroponic nutrients you can find. I’m sure some people pay in excess of 50 cents per gallon, 1 dollar per gallon or more! Think of how many people go out and but the ENTIRE line of whatever nutrient brand (GH, Botanicare, Advanced Nutrients, Humbodlt Nutrients) just so that they can have the ‘phattest harvest’ with BUDS AS BIG AS YOUR ARMS! By the way, if you haven’t seen the Advanced Nutrients videos starring ‘Big Mike’ (the big boss man of AN, former grower, and full-time hustler), you gotta check em out, purely for their comedic value. I don’t recommend anyone touch Advanced Nutrients with a ten-foot-pole. Skeez-ass snake-oil salesman is what they are. Shitty thing for them is they have some good products, they just fuck it up by feeding people shit and making them think you’ve got to have a 2o bottle nutrient formula in order to grow healthy plants.

Here’s the link to Big Mikeys phat arm-buds or whatver.
http://www.growersunderground.com/blog/hydroponics-secrets/watch-this-video-and-discover-how-to-grow-big-fat-bad-ass-buds-the-size-of-your-arms-and-no-more-ph-ppm-metering-or-adjusting-it%E2%80%99s-all-done-for-you

A question… to think on… hydroponics nutrients represent the best technology we have for growing abundant, healthy food. So why are certain company-founders and big shots carrying around big bellies and have no ass? That doesn’t seem healthy to me. Just take a look at Big Mike from AN, who we can refer to as Fat Mike, no offense to Fat Mike of NOFX, although I wouldn’t care if he was offended. I’m sure he’s nice =) But seriously, owners and founders should represent their company. Even Lawrence Brook, founder of General Hydroponics has a generous-sized belly. Certainly the hype of hydro hasn’t gone to his head, just his belly. I’m sure he has a nice ass compared to Big Mike, as Mr. Mike-intosh (I like to bastardize peoples names…) seems vastly less healthy. Man, I remember a video I saw of Big Mike standing next to his vitamin cabinet, talking about how into health he is because the fact that he has 300+ bottles of vitamins means he’s obviously on the right track. WRONG. You know, it might have even been the same video, as this guy isn’t very observant, that he talks about how he likes to have his daily McDonalds smorgasbord of a meal, and thinks nothing of it. Now, I know that many, many healthy people can handle Mickey D’s without a problem, but this guy is NOT healthy. He wants to be, I’m sure, but he’s very misled. He thinks that more  equals better, and it usually doesn’t. Seriously though, I need to find that video… there were literally HUNDREDS of vitamin bottles. You want some good vitamins guy? Eat good food! Fuck the vitamins! If I had as diverse of a food source as I would like, I would forego vitamins altogether. With all of the meat and plants you should be eating, all of those vitamins you need are already there. That’s why they’re called ‘supplements’. Agh. That man drives me crazy… because he’s indoctrinating more people into his inane craziness. Reminds me of my mom.

Anyways, I think that’s about all I have to say. Ah… except, EXCEPT for what I originally felt the need to blog about.

Our ebb and flow system. It could be better. It’s not fully complete, which sounds strange because how do you even use a semi-complete ebb and flow system? I’ll tell you. And then I’ll tell you why it’s not practical, and why I need to have it finished in order to proceed. Actually, lemme take some quick pics so that you can actually see what kind of half-assed ebb and flow system I have set up. Parts of it are fairly ingenious, however they would have to be done slightly differently for stability and safety. If you have even the most basic recognition of what a traditional/conventional ebb and flow system looks like, you’ll notice this is definitely NOT one of those. The method in which the water goes in and out of the trays is something I’ve never seen before, it works very well despite being extremely unconventional.

1.) The water pump in the reservoir gets switched on (via pre-programmed digital timer) and forces water through the 1/2″ poly tubing manifold, and then on to the 1/4″ should-be-opaque-instead-of-clear-and-growing-algea tubing. I plan to upgrade to black/blue/white 1/4″ tubing very soon. Here’s a close up shot of the pump, manifold and leach line assembly. This system can kind of be thought as a hybrid ebb and flow and dutch leach system.

Ebb and flow is a concept where water is forced up through a vertical column connected to the bottom of the tray with a specialized pass-through fitting, distributed through the plants in the tray and then it drains back down.

Dutch leach is a system where the fittings to the tray are on the side, instead of the bottom of the tray. Water is pumped up from a reservoir, which like conventional ebb and flow is beneath the trays, using the force of gravity to bring the water back down.

A very non-traditional ebb and flow/dutch leach manifold.

You’ll see that my method is kind of kooky? Risky, in a way, definitely in the way I’ve executed it. It could be done more solidly, that’s for sure. This is all about experimentation, and not having enough money at the time to get the correct components. I’ve learned so much that I don’t really mind the dozens and dozens of strange failures I’ve had along the way. All those setbacks were merely lessons for me to learn, and apply to my life.

Reservoir, leach lines and trays.

Strangely enough, the leach lines I have aren’t even hard-connected to the system! I have them gingerly draped over the sides of the trays, were they dip down and lay on the tray bottoms, secured by none other than rocks. Yes, Rocks! Hah. Oh man, this system is too funny. It really works in a pinch though, and it doesn’t require that you make ANY cuts or drills in the plastic. That’s why I had done it this way from the start, because I didn’t want to plump holes in my trays, then realize I didn’t like ebb and flow and have to go out and buy new trays. Now, granted, these aren’t even specialty hydro trays, they’re $8 under-the-bed storage containers that I bought at Big Lots or Walmart.

Leach line in tray #1

Leach line in tray #2

In those pics you can totally see my strange-and-poor-hippie-ass method to keep the lines in the trays. It fucking works! I’ve never had a failure of this system because of the lines. Never. Try it just as an experiment, it’s really cool. They trays fill just as you would expect them too, then when the pump shuts off, the siphon effect created by the water in the lines ‘falling’ back down into the reservoir is enough force to pull 98% of the water from the trays right back into the reservoir. Do note however, because of small inner-diameter of these lines, it takes 15 minutes for the trays to fill to 3″ of nutrient solution, and a further 30 minutes to drain back down. That’s a total of 45 minutes of presence of water. Some hydroponicists would completely freak out and never recommend that, and I might not ‘recommend’ it, but it certainly hasn’t given me a performance hit. Plants roots can be submerged under water for quite some time and grow like there’s no tomorrow. I fully understand that higher levels of oxygen in the root zone correlate to better performance, but honestly, I’m using coco pith with an aeration holding capacity of 30% when FULLY SATURATED. It’s not something I worry about. I mean, I wouldn’t want to sit my plants in inches of stagnant water and leave them for a week, no… you just have to be rational about what you can expect, what is usually expected, and why. Trial and error give the best results.

This is why I love coco. Say, if my pump actually broke and I had to hand water, I could hand water every other day and my plants could take it, just as well as they could being fed once a day in ebb and flow. If I was using hydroton / expanded clay pellets and my pump failed, I’d have to buy a new one, there’s no question, let alone watering every other day? Shit. Plants would tank after a few hours under strong  HPS light. However, one way to adapt to a failed pump in an expanded clay pellet based medium system would be to close off the plumping to the trays, fill them with several inches of nutrient solution, and fill it with enough air diffusers to keep the water moving. A small water pump would work as well, you just need to keep the solution agitated.

Coco for cannabis is my life insurance policy. It has a tremendous cation-exchange-capacity (CEC), which is obviously a benefit for heavy feeding cannabis like the girls I have. Speaking of heavy feeding, that reminds me of a blog post I should make sort of chronicling our adventure as cannabis growers here at the Temple of Boo. I will remember, and act on this. Anyways… getting back to the point, this system we have is growing our buds fantastically. It might not be our most ideal setup, in fact one thing that it is lacking is any type of overflow fitting, which is quite important, but not absolutely necessary. We’re making the move to a traditional ebb and flow, which will be even less maintenance than this one. I like this system, it works, but there are more caveats than a traditional ebb and flow. It works nicely as a transitional system between hand watering or drip and ebb and flow, but on its own it will probably not find much use in many peoples lives.

On that note, want to see some simple but always amazing cannabis porn? Here you go, straight from the DSLR, un-photoshopped for your viewing pleasure. Please note, I have no problem with photoshop or image editing of any kind, I just didn’t want to use any in these images in order to render the colors more as they look to  my eye.

Buds =)

Sweet buds gradient.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way. Cats porn? Yes, please!

This first pic is of our baby mouse, Comphrey. As far as we know, she’s the runt of the litter. We have one of her sisters, named Conola, you’ll see her soon. Last but not least, her brother Canada. He’s a real beast of a boy cat, I love him! You’ll see him soon as well. We found these three cats abandoned by their mother in the back of my Boo Codalion’s Grandma’s house. We’ve wondered if there were more in the litter than just the three, as often there are more than three. Well, we saw two just the same age as ours, running around playfully in the neighborhood of Codalions Grandmas’ house. They looked happy and healthy. I hope someone took them in, I know we sure wanted to but Codalions mom said “no more cats!” I understand though, I mean, we already have three full grown cats in the house haha. Ohhh, in addition to our two dogs, this place is such an animal house =)

comphrey! what is she now, 3 months old? still under 4 pounds!

The only other pic I have edited right now is of our big boy Edelweiss. I happened to take pictures of Edelweiss and Comphrey because they walked into the room to hang out with me when I was taking pictures. They’re so sweet <3

Edelweiss

That’s about it for now. I hope to be back soon with plenty of words and pictures for all you cannabis and cat lovers everywhere =)

<3Basil

Anyways, this is a great song from their latest album Automatic (2011).

Tear apart the life and times of familiar faces
And tracing lines to what connects me and binds me to
Images of the remote and never-changing
Grand designs, style and grace
And am I

Lost in thoughts on open seas
Let the currents carry me
If I could would I remain
Another life or another dream

No turning back, face the fact
I am lost in space and time
Turning here, looking back in time

One and all let us celebrate the rise and fall
Celebrate the life and times of splendor
Desire and love constant and never-changing
The flow of times, closed in lines
Can’t tell if I’m just

Lost in thoughts on open seas
Let the currents carry me
If I could would I remain
Another life or another dream

No turning back, face the fact
I am lost in space and time
Turning here, looking back in time

<3