Tag Archives: nursery

ezra, homegrown, moisture festival, nursery, philharmonic, snake suspenderz / alive

you know the drill…

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darol has had some “viability issues” with his current crop of clones, and so has been set back about a month. so i’m planning on going back to bellingham, AGAIN, around the end of the month, to get clones. i have four clones from space queen that are still looking like they’re growing, and i THINK i have seen new leaf growth on at least two of them, which is a very good sign. i need to start thinking about adding ventilation in the nursery, because, as the weather gets warmer, ventilation is DEFINITELY going to be an issue.

i just completed seven shows in five days with the fremont philharmonic, at the moisture festival. this is my 23rd year of performing with the moisture festival, which has been going on for… twenty-three years… 😉 — i’ve been performing in the moisture festival for as long as i had been alive, in 1983, the year ezra was born… 😖 — if you’re going to go to the moisture festival, this year, you had better hurry, because about half of the shows have been so sold out that not even volunteers or artists could get seats, and it’s only got one more week. snakes alive! is playing what passes for the “late night saturday” show these days, which is 17:30 (and gets out at 21:00, because we’re old now… 😒)

cannabis, homegrown, nursery, pictures

nursupd 2

somehow i managed to keep three of the four clones alive since the last update, but only just barely… there’s one that basically died, and i put it aside with the intent of composting it, eventually, and there are two which looked like they were going to pull through, but then they didn’t grow at all for two months, and i thought they weren’t going to make it, when the first one started doing better (which was, for all intents and purposes, “dead”), so i stopped paying attention to the two that i thought weren’t going to make it, and re-potted the one that i thought might pull through after all, and after a couple weeks it went from being, for all intents and purposes, dead, to being the plant that i thought had the best chance of the three… and then the other two miraculously pulled through, and now, three months later, all three are looking like they’re going to survive.

i actually took four clones from the big one, today: two are going to my next door neighbour, who has been getting starts from a “professional” grower for who knows how long, now (since before i moved in, six years ago), but who has gone out of business, this year, because “it is legal, now”.

250924 -- a ten-foot-tall cannabis plant
250924 — a ten-foot-tall cannabis plant – point of reference: that is a six-foot-tall fence…
i am planning on going up to bellingham on friday, where i hope to meet up with darol and bring home some starts of his strain, because the next door neighbour was so impressed with “the christmas tree” that he grew, last year… which, basically, he put back in a shadowed part of his back yard and ignored last summer, and it produced a crop anyway. this year he wants to try putting them on his deck, where there’s more sunlight, so any starts i bring home from bellingham will go to the neighbours, as well.

i’m still in awe that it is ACTUALLY LEGAL… 🎉 at the state level… 😒

cannabis, homegrown, nursery

miscellaneous updatish which turned into a nursery update…

i got some rockwool cubes in which to start clones. they don’t work. 👎 the clones i put in rockwool hadn’t developed ANY new roots in almost a month, but, because of the fact that i had kept them covered, and sprayed them with water, they were still alive. so i took all four of them, re-treated them with rooting powder, and transplanted them into soil, two weeks ago. i’ve still kept them covered, and spray them with water, and they’re all still alive, as far as i can tell. and, at least, in soil, they SHOULD develop roots that make themselves evident after a month or so.

i finally finished harvesting the fall crop, which turned out to be three, 1-quart jars stuffed full of fat, sticky buds of the space queen strain. 🤤 the stuffed 1-gallon ziplock bag i gave to ezra was from the summer crop, was different, random strains from bellingham, and a couple different ones from my next-door neighbour. i got four 1-quart jars stuffed full of space-queen buds from the summer harvest. 🤤

i moved one plant into the nursery, from the light booth, a couple of days ago. this is the “mother” of the four clones that were in rockwool, and are now in soil. it’s a clone of the really vigorous space queen plant i grew from seed, over the summer… from last year’s seed, if i recall correctly… 😉

homegrown, nursery

this is different…

i took four clones, three days ago, and have kept them covered and sprayed them twice a day, and they’re ALREADY looking FAR better than the last clones did… to the point where i may have actually created four clones, instead of three, or two… or one…

rather as i suspected, but i didn’t expect them to be as vigorous as they obviously are… despite the fact that they’re clones i originally took from the most vigorous plant that i grew from seed, over the summer, and (probably) BECAUSE OF the fact that i’m actually doing it RIGHT this time…

who knew?

also, my next-door neighbour gave me a pint jar of buds that came from the 12-foot plant that i got from darol in april… PLEASE! I DO NOT NEED ANY MORE WEED!!! 🤣🤣🤣

ezra, nursery

seryate

soaking rockwool cubes in preparation for cloning.

the one remaining space queen clone that i currently have in the light booth is preparing for transfer to flowering lights. once cloning occurs — some time within the next few days, if everything stays calm — and everybody is stable, it will happen.

sigh…

i am not preparing to have a very large harvest this time, because 1) i’m just coming away from a HUGE harvest from the summer (nine plants), and a decent harvest from the fall (two plants), 2) because it’s winter, and 3) because, in spite of everything else, i STILL have issues with the nursery that i’d REALLY LIKE to address, before i start “cranking it out”, namely electrical wiring, and ventilation. 😉

eventually…

i have decided that the majority of the nine plants i produced over the summer (seven of them) is going to my son. that way i won’t have to deal with it, apart from drying and de-stemming, and he’ll get a treat for xmas. 🎅 (that’s supposed to be santa claus, in case it’s not obvious.) i’ve already filled one gallon ziplock bag, and am about a quarter of the way towards a second gallon ziplock bag… and i’ve still got A LOT that’s still hanging, and needs to be de-stemmed. 😉

cannabis, homegrown, nursery, pictures

nursupd

251101 space queen buds
251101 space queen buds
i harvested the two space queen clones in the nursery yesterday. the buds are fat and beautiful. i keep on expecting to raise huge buds, and i haven’t gotten there yet, but i’m getting better at it, and these buds are DEFINITELY nothing at which to sneeze. 😉

and i got five quart mason jars JUST of space queen buds from the previous batch. the rest — a mix of random, who knows what predominantly sativa strain, and darol’s heavily sativa strain from bellingham — is probably going to go to ezra, as an xmas present…

251101 space queen buds
251101 space queen buds

FLASHBACK to when ezra was around 3 years old… walking unsteadily, learning to talk… katharyn was living next to whatcom falls park, and we went up the street to bloedel-donovan park with ezra, for a picnic lunch. when we got there, they had just aerated the lawn, and there were little plugs of turf all over the place. when ezra alighted from his stroller, he went around picking up plugs of turf, and bringing them back to us, saying “dopes? dopes?” 🤣

but, seriously, it gives me a way to get rid of the MASSIVE QUANTITIES of weed i have hanging around the house. 🙄 it’s what i get for growing NINE plants this summer… from now on, i’ll raise as many clones as i can, but i will be a lot more ruthless about culling the weak ones, early on. i’ve got one clone left in the light booth, but i’ll get a lot more clones from that, when the time comes, and, honestly, at this point, i don’t really NEED MORE weed. 😉

meta, miscellaneous, moe, nursery, pe(s)ts

the date of ďɳ

i’m trying to make the title say “the date of dn” because “dn”, upside down, is “up”… but i can’t find a unicode “d” that will stay a lower-case “d” when the rest of the title is forced upper-case… and, naturally, i don’t remember the html and/or css to make it ignore the forced capitalisation for the title, so i’m giving up. the title of the post is “THE DATE OF dn” and you can safely ignore whatever it says on the actual title line, this time. 😕

i just enabled three PHP modules that have not been enabled previously. as far as i can tell, they don’t make any difference, but having them enabled makes the annoying reminder in the wordpress admin section go away.

since the 2nd of july i have collected 26 dated folders, with anywhere from one to ten recordings, each, of me calling so-called “helpdesk” numbers — mostly claiming to come from micro$oft (naturally), norton (naturally), paypal (naturally), apple, amazon, fedex, or geek-squad — and saying “i wonder if you can tell me what it feels like to steal money from people?” probably 90% to 95% of the people on the other end have indian accents, but they give suspiciously american sounding names like “max” or “mike” or “jason” or “mary” or “sarah”, and about half of them are OBVIOUSLY in a “call center”, somewhere, where i can hear a whole bunch of other people getting scammed in a whole bunch of other languages. about a third of them respond by saying that they’re not stealing money from people, trying to convince me that they are, actually, representatives of a legitimate business, another third of them just hang up with no further comment, and the final third of them say things like “oh my god”, or “shut the fuck up, motherfucker”, or “i’ll fuck your wife”, or “suck your dad’s cock”, or “oldie, black, nigger from nigeria, hanging ass” or other such racist and seemingly offensive things — — which a REAL representative of a REAL legitimate company would lose their job INSTANTANEOUSLY for uttering over the telephone to a customer (and, honestly, i could care less what any of them say, because THEY ARE SCAMMERS, which is worse 😒)… but every now and then, i’ll ask the question and their response will be “fantastic” or “wonderful”, which makes me wonder what kind of interview actually passes these people.

moe went to chicago yesterday, and returns tomorrow, meaning that i have to take care of the dogs and the birds, as well as my usual nursery, laundry, and groceries for three days.

i replaced the GFI outlet under the deck with a non-GFI model, and, so far, the shed has NOT blown any circuits, whereas, before i replaced it, i had to reset the circuit no less than three times in five days. whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen, but if it is, it has saved me a bunch of money in the short term, and if it isn’t, then the shed is far enough away from our house that any resulting fire probably won’t harm anything of importance.

cannabis, homegrown, house stuff, nursery

back yard post

i finished manicuring the remaining outdoor plants. they still have a week or so to go before they get the chop, but now, all the remaining juice goes into the buds, and nothing else. i have two plants that have been hanging for a week, three that have been hanging for five days, and four that haven’t yet been harvested, plus two plants under flowering lights in the nursery — which, if everything goes the way it’s looking now, will produce more finished bud than my four outdoor plants! 👍👍 — and two or three clones in the light booth: two for sure, and one that still hasn’t decided whether or not it’s going to take.

and, it turns out that there is very likely a much less complicated and more immediate solution to the shed re-wiring problem! i still want to re-wire the shed, but it turns out that i really DON’T NEED a GFI outlet where the shed gets plugged into the house, AND GFI outlets get “tricky” with age. because of the fact that i KNOW the previous owner was a cheap-ass motherfucker, there’s no telling where the original GFI outlet came from… which means that, armed with a screwdriver and a replacement outlet, I can switch off the circuit that contains that damn GFI outlet, switch out the outlet with a new, non-GFI outlet, and PROBABLY solve my immediate problem.

forward into the past, hats, homegrown, nursery, TIMMAH!, weird

nursery update &c…

of my “outside” plants, i now have two harvested plants — the two space queen plants, which were started from seed in april — plus two plants that will most likely be harvested tomorrow, one plant that is currently being manicured and will probably be harvested within the next couple of weeks, and four plants from darol, which still have a month, more or less, to go before they’re ready for harvest. i also have two plants in the nursery which just started flowering in the past week, and three baby clones in the light booth (the fourth one didn’t make it). the plants in the nursery and the light booth are all clones of the most vigourous of the space queen plants which are the first two harvested plants. this is the primary reason i want to keep this strain going: space queen is one of my favourite strains, and it hit-or-miss whether any of the local dispensaries carry it… plus, then i would have to pay for it, whereas growing it at home means free weed!

😉

the electrical SNAFU in the shed is still there, and i still don’t know what i’m going to do about it.

😒

in other news, recently i received a text message from my mother-in-law, asking if i knew of a way to produce fire from your fingertips. back when i was a stage magician (in other words, 50+ years ago), i learned about this stage effect where you point at a lit candle and a 3-to-4-foot-long tongue of flame leaps out of your fingertips. this is produced by a special powder called “dragons’ breath” (technically, it is “lycopodium powder” which is the dried spores of “clubmoss“) which, at the time, was ONLY available from magic shops, places that specialised in stage effects, and specialised chemical supply places… of course, NOW you can buy it wholesale from amazon… 😮 it is delivered from “MiniScience”, which is one of the aforementioned “specialised chemical supply places”, but they advertise on amazon, and if you know what to look for, it’s there… i told my mother-in-law about it, but she wasn’t interested, because she was looking for “safe” fire from your fingertips. 🙄 my take on her desires are that it’s either “safe” or it’s “fire-from-your-fingertips”, but it probably is NOT both. so, naturally, i bought some, and soon i will have a little foofer that blows dragons’ breath… and, i will be one step closer to re-creating the character of Tim The Magician, from Monty Python and The Holy Grail. 😈

along the same lines, i have been playing around with needle-felting cat fur, and my hat, because, while i ABSOLUTELY LOVE my hat, it has never been EXACTLY what i wanted, because it is one colour, and i wanted there to be lighter coloured patches and spots… and, what do you know, timmy’s fur is IDEAL for needle-felting, and he’s already got a WHOLE BUNCH of it that has already fallen out, or been brushed off. i’ve designated a special box for wads of cat fur, for future needle-felting projects. 😉

nursery, pictures

approaching another decision point, and others

so i THINK i’ve got the spider mites under control, and i’m pretty sure that three out of the four clones that i started are actually going to take, but there are problems that keep creeping into the equation and i’m not sure whether it would be better to deal with them now, or put them off for another season or two…

basically, my big problem is that i need to re-wire the shed, so that i can install at least two new outlet boxes, one inside the nursery, and one outside. then — actually, at the same time — i need to install some sort of ventilation with a fan that is on the same timer as the lights.

problems arise when “we” can’t afford a “proper” electrician, because we’re still figuring out how to deal with the heat-pump that is too small for the size of the space. which means that, if we want to pay for it, it will have to be out of the “hybrid elephant” account, and i’m not sure i can classify re-wiring my nursery as a “business expense”.

fortunately, there’s another option. apparently thaddeus has a fair amount of experience re-wiring houses, and so he’s going to come by and see if he can advise me what to do.

there were at least three other subjects i wanted to talk about, but i can’t remember what they were, at this point, so, instead, i will post pictures of a walk i took today to sdukʷalbixʷ falls. maybe i’ll remember what the other stuff was later on.

250916 - henry under the bridge
250916 – henry under the bridge

this guy is a friend of a number of friends of mine, but i’ve yet to meet him. his artwork is all signed “henry”, and he has a project going, where he’s painting 1000 sasquatch heads in various places… i’ve seen a bunch of them, but i’d be willing to bet that not very many people have seen this one, because it’s UNDER a bridge in a VERY REMOTE area… i.e. an ideal place for a graffiti artist to place his work (and there were quite a few other graffiti artists who had worked under the same bridge) and have it last for decades.

250916 - sdukʷalbixʷ falls from the east, looking west
250916 – sdukʷalbixʷ falls from the east, looking west
250916 - DANGER! Sdukʷalbixʷ Falls Ahead 1200 Feet
250916 – DANGER! Sdukʷalbixʷ Falls Ahead 1200 Feet
250916 - sdukʷalbixʷ falls from the west, looking east
250916 – sdukʷalbixʷ falls from the west, looking east

i actually went to the sdukʷalbixʷ falls lodge — a TREMENDOUSLY upper-crust place which has changed its name to the somewhat-more-politically-correct “salish” lodge, these days — for breakfast, when i was a kid — probably before we moved to new york, so some time before 1968 — my recollection is that it may have been to celebrate my 8th birthday, which was also the one where my cub scout troop was on the J.P. Patches’ show. all i remember of it was that it was in a huge, fancy dining hall with towering roof beams and a view of the falls, which was just a trickle, because it was july, when the river was low. back then it was a fairly long drive from wherever it was that we were living in seattle to this REMOTE place. today it’s about 20 minutes from my house, and it’s a place that i can go whenever i want… AS LONG AS i don’t want to eat at the lodge, because, today, it’s PROHIBITIVELY expensive, and you have to make a reservation six months in advance.

nursery, ron zeising

the nursery… 😒

well, i moved four plants into the nursery on sunday and they didn’t even last a week before i moved them outside, again, this afternoon. 😒

there are two major problems. one is that the two clones have developed spider-mites, and the other is that i REALLY need to put some ventilation into the nursery, because with six plants and two grow-lights, it is developing a MAJOR moisture problem which, without proper ventilation, WILL develop into a MAJOR MOLD problem.

so, i moved the four formerly outdoor plants back outdoors, under the canopy, and trimmed off all the cruft, dead leaves, moldy bits, and too-tiny not-quite buds, so now they LOOK a lot more appetizing, and i treated the indoor clones to a healthy dusting of diatomaceous earth, and now i’ve got to hope for the best, because the weather-guessers are saying that it’s going to rain within the next few days. inside the nursery, i hung up a curtain, left the door open, and put in another fan, but the fan is a temporary stop-gap, because it’s over the rating for the junction-box on the end of an extension cord that runs from a ground-fault-interrupt circuit from the back of the house (thanks to the former owner of the house 😒) and is not on its own circuit, as it should be… and before ANY more modification is made to the wiring, INCLUDING adding ventilation, i HAVE TO re-wire the entire shed, so that it is on its own circuit… and re-wiring the shed is PROBABLY going to have to wait until AFTER we deal with the heat pump in the house — which, when we bought the house, was sold to us as the “latest-and-greatest” HVAC available, but, it turns out, is TOO SMALL for the size of house we have… THANKS TO THE FORMER OWNER OF THE HOUSE 😠 (who never used it, and ONLY installed it because it was the “latest-and-greatest”, which meant that he could sell the house for more money) 😠🙄

when my father-in-law was still alive, he was someone i could have counted on to help me re-wire the shed, because he was a certified electrician, but… it’s possible that my next door neighbour may have a clue — he’s a “certified handy-man”, and a certified plumber — but i don’t know…

cannabis, homegrown, nursery, pictures

the nursery

so, i have 9 outdoor plants, including two space queen seedlings from april, that have been flowering since june 21st, and two space queen clones which have been vegetating since june 21st — which is a little too long, but i only realised that yesterday… 😐

so, i put the new nursery into full effect today: i moved the light-proof booth out of the nursery, put the two clones under flowering lights, and (at the same time) created four NEW clones, which are now in the light-proof booth, under vegetative lights.

and, since the weather-guessers were significantly WRONG yesterday (they guessed that there wouldn’t be any precipitation at all, in reality, there was a thunder-storm that lasted most of the night), i also moved four outdoor plants (which were complaining about the rain) into the nursery, so now i have two DIFFERENT crops under flowering lights. fortunately, the light-cycle for flowering is the same for everyone: 12 hours of light, and 12 hours of complete darkness.

the schedule for flowering is a little different for indoor plants compared to outdoor plants: exclusively outdoor plants take about 6 months from seedling to harvest, whereas exclusively indoor plants take 4 to 5 months… which means that there is, by necessity, going to be some wrangling and confusion while i move from outdoor growing to indoor growing. but, as i mentioned to moe, yesterday, the difference will be doing more work on the outdoor plants, for a relatively short period of time, followed by doing no work at all for half the year, whereas indoor plants take less work, but it’s stretched out throughout the year, producing more consistent crops, more regularly.

250906 cannabis flowers
250906 cannabis flowers
250906 cannabis flowers
250906 cannabis flowers
250906 cannabis flowers
250906 cannabis flowers
250906 cannabis consumer
250906 cannabis consumer

this is to help me remember what the schedule is, more than anything else. the reason why i let the two clones go as long as i did was because i wasn’t sure how long they should be under vegetative lights. hopefully i’ll do better the next time around. 😉

nursery, ocf

pre-OCF update

all panto rehearsals prior to the “dress rehearsal” which has an audience, but happens at the fairgrounds, on thursday, prior to our opening on friday at noon, have been completed, including an “emergency”, last-minute, saturday rehearsal with just the band and king oswald, who hasn’t been as diligent about learning his lines as he has been in the past (😉). it is a fairly decent show, as long as everybody remembers their lines, and their entrances… which, i guess, is about as good as it can get, considering that we’re gearing up for a weekend of performances at the oregon country fair.

i turn 65 at the fair, this year, AND this year will be my 20th fair, which, technically, means that i am doubly eligible for “elder” status. what that means has yet to be fully divulged to me, but my recollection is that there is a separate “elders” booth at registration, and it’s my impression that, if anybody could tell me, they could. 😉 also, this year i actually have a legitimate, legal handicapped placard that is MINE, which SHOULD mean that i get to park closer to the stage than i could in the past… but that has yet to be seen.

most of my list of stuff to bring to the fair has been assembled, and the significant deficiencies are mainly clothing and medication related stuff — and, yes, i include “illegal” drugs such as mushrooms and cannabis in the latter category. 🤓 i’m probably not going to start packing clothes until tuesday evening, before which i intend to do massive amounts of laundry, in hopes of getting enough ahead of it that i can go away for five days without causing problems for monique, later in the week.

despite all this meticulous planning, i am still feeling a sense of unknown dread, because of all of the things i know COULD go wrong. i wish it would go away. 😒

in other news, all three clones are looking like they’re going to make it, which means at least one more round of space queen, eventually, and, potentially, many more. 😉 but i’ve got NINE other plants (two space queen, from last year’s seeds, four starts from darol, and three starts from tracy), all of which are outside, which are doing PHENOMENALLY well, so it looks like i’m well on my way to never having to HAVE to buy weed ever again. and, TECHNICALLY — according to the terms of my permit — i could have three MORE plants without violating any laws. 😎

we live in phenomenally strange times, when weed is legal, but fluoridated water is not. 😵🙄

cannabis, homegrown, nursery, ocf

sslluuuuuurrmm! 🍶

the lights have been hung, and are functional. when i actually start using them (which will be when the clones start to flower), i will buy a new timer, just for them.

i REALLY need to correctly re-wire the whole thing. it is currently the end of a really long extension cord that is plugged into an outdoor GFI next to the deck. it really needs to be on its own circut, and i need to add another 4 outlets OUTSIDE the grow-room NURSERY, for plugging in weed-whacker batteries and suchlike.

i started collecting things on my list of stuff to take to OCF. it took a lot less time than i thought it would to get most of the stuff on the list.