Did you know the Peyote cactus is extremely slow growing, it can take 10–30 years for the plant to mature before flowering. It has pink to white flowers in summer, and the fruit ripens the following year.

Green apples contain a compound called pectin, a fiber source that works as a prebiotic to promote the growth of healthy bacteria in your gut. The pectin found in green apples can help you break down foods more efficiently. The reason some apples are tart, while others are sweet, is because of varying levels of acids in the fruit, and especially the varying levels of malic acid. This naturally occurring compound is often referred to as “apple acid” because it makes up 94% of the total acid in an apple.

Guava leaf extract has been shown to have an anticancer effect. Test-tube and animal studies show that guava extract can prevent and even stop the growth of cancer cells.

This is likely due to the high levels of powerful antioxidants that prevent free radicals from damaging cells, one of the main causes of cancer.

One test-tube study found that guava leaf oil was four times more effective at stopping cancer cell growth than certain cancer drugs.

Although the results of test-tube experiments are promising, it doesn’t mean that guava leaf extract helps treat cancer in people. Further studies are needed before any claims can be made. But still an interesting fact.

Guava is also high in myrcene, which is also found in cannabis. Studies have shown that myrcene tends to encourage the notorious “couch-lock” induced by the sedative qualities of THC and a high concentration of Myrcene. At the same time, many myrcene strains are known for producing joyful and euphoric effects, in addition to an overall feeling of relaxation.

Some food for thought 😜🌱💚

Got my beans soaking at 7am. Eleven beans down, let's see what we get.

Did you know 2,500 variety of apples are grown in the United States. And 7,500 varieties of apples are grown all over the world.

Planted 6 of 11 beans that cracked with 1/4 inch tails directly into coco. Looks like 4 more are starting to pop this morning, maybe later this evening they'll be ready to plant.

I don't mind these beans taking their time, I have other plants finishing up, plants to transplant, clones to take, and flower to trim. Got a full work load and still need to clean and set up my auto water system. I'm thinking of getting a flood table so I can grow more plants then I normally would with coco. I really need to do some upgrades.

Did you know... The aphorism, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” originated in Wales, first appearing in a publication in 1866 in a different rhyming format: “Eat an apple on going to bed and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread.” The saying reappeared in 1913 in its current form.

Happy growing!!

Seven of nine planted are showing their heads.

First feed 540 ec, pH 6.0, didn't check outflow. Humidity sitting at 70%, temps roughly 70-78f.

Looks like one more seed will germinate from the paper towel as well. Two seeds had a hard time opening so I cracked them a bit and I can see one with a radicale ready to come out. Not sure the other will germinate, even so 9 of 11 is pretty nice.

Still waiting on flowering plants to finish up before we clean up the 5x5 and give them some room. Should get some sex testing done before I really decide what to do. We'll see where we are next week and decide if we're going to order some. Hopefully we have a better ratio of females with this round of regulars, only got 4 of 10 last year. Can't wait to see what we get.

Did you know...The apple tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, is still found today. Apples have been grown for thousands of years in Asia and Europe and were brought to North America by European colonists.

Archaeologists have found evidence that people have been eating apples since at least 6500 B.C.

Apples were brought to North America by colonists in the 17th century. In 1625, Reverend William Blaxton planted the first apple orchard on the North American continent in New England.

Apple varieties brought as seeds from Europe were spread along Native American trade routes, as well as being cultivated on Colonial farms. By the mid-1600s there were about 60 varieties of apples.

John Chapman, (a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed) really did exist and is one of the reasons why we have so many apples today. Chapman owned many tree nurseries in the Midwest and sold and traded apple trees.

Apples, species Malus domestica, are members of the Rose family, and have five flowers with five petals and five sepals.

Happy growing!!!

Ec up to 800 in and out. Only 7 seeds made it, hopefully the majority are females. We have other stuff going on incase we don't get any girls.

Still waiting on the flowering tent to finish up, we'll probably clean it out by the end of the week though.

I may have to drop out of this challenge. I found spider mites on all of my plants. I threw all the plants outside except for the seedlings but I've seen a few here and there. I've treated with azadachtrine and I'm ordering some persimilis and californicus to help combat them.

Going to have to sanitize everything and hope for the best. First time I've gotten them. I just want to break my tents down and set them on fire. I can buy new tents, I'd rather not risk it. Maybe I'll just shut down for a month and reboot with all new stuff. I'm sick.

Seedlings are in quarantine with a few clones. Will be in predation by Tuesday. Damage isn't very significant but they all need some tlc. They ended up falling over from the knockdown treatment but I'm not too concerned. Hopefully the spider mites are completely eradicated by this time next week.

I can finally say I've dealt with spider mites, hopefully I can win this fight.

Warning! These next images might be horrific. Here are the clones before we noticed the infestation.

It started out on my gg4 clone.

I didn't realize what it was at first. I took them all out and set them outside, then treated them with Azamax. Left them outside over night, it got down to 40f with wind and rain. I'm sure they enjoyed that lol, nothing like nature to help you take care of a pest problem.

I treated the seedlings with insecticidal soap then went out to soak the plants outside the next day. They were very busy on the gg4, I had webs on a lot of the lower growth. Inspected other plants for webs, found a few, then proceeded to cut off everything that appeared to have mites on it aside from main stems. I cut a lot off of everything, leaving mostly just the top growth tips.

I forgot to mention I had sanitized my tent before doing all this. I sprayed insecticidal soap everywhere, then wiped everything down with clorox wipes including lights fans and ports. I cleaned up the best plants to bring inside, treated all of them again, then went inside to shower. I left the gg4 outside along with a Guava and I cut one plant down entirely of Snaggletooth.

This was a hard hit but I'm hoping my diligence and persistence will persevere over the worst pest a grower can encounter. They got their work cut out for them if they want to mess with me. 

Anyways here's something interesting to hear about apples. There has been a lot of research done on apple rootstocks – particularly in determining the effect of tree size and time to first harvest. Apples are one of the few fruit crops in which the rootstock has the ability to induce dwarfing of the scion cultivar. Thus, apple rootstocks are divided into groups based on the ability to dwarf the scion. Rootstocks that limit tree size to 15-45% standard are considered dwarf; 50-75% standard size are semi-dwarf; and anything above 85% is usually referred to as standard.

Happy growing!!

Well here we go, our road to recovery looks bright. Things went well over the weekend, no new signs of pest damage, and no signs of new pests.

I have all my plants in predation thanks to Arbico.

treated the plants outside with some fallacis and released some inside as well.

The seedlings are starting to hit their stride, they are all ugly ducklings though. Pest problems haven't helped, I've been battling fungus gnats as well as spider mites. I found out that's how my germinated seeds I was waiting on died. I went to inspect the shells and found larvae crawling out of them, my fault for cramming them in with the organics. Most of the seedlings have odd shaped leaves, I'm not sure if it was caused by pests or genetics. Hopefully they grow out of their funky looks.

I'm glad I didn't just give up, I was really upset and ready to throw away everything. Can't wait to start sexing and see what we get, I'm really itching to pollinate some plants. Think I'll go with delta leaf labs again and start making some moves here pretty soon. Flip males to receive pollen and flip the organics to start some pollination on the females. This is definitely going to be fun regardless of the major obstacles I've encountered.

Time for an interesting fact...The science of apple growing is called pomology. Apple trees take four to five years to produce their first fruit. Most apples are still picked by hand in the fall. Apple varieties range in size from a little larger than a cherry to as large as a grapefruit. The apple tree (Malus domestica) begins producing fruit after two to 10 years, depending on the type of rootstock or if it's grown from seed. Dwarf trees begin producing fruit first, while seedlings require a minimum of six years of growth before fruiting.

Happy growing!!

Things are moving along. Still recovering from calmag issues and gnats are almost gone. The pests were pretty bad this year, my other tent is getting hit hard and they just migrate over after lights go off. Think I have a handle on it though.

I'm about to transplant soon but I have some testers that are going to be sharing this space. I have no idea where I'm going to put all these plants but we'll make due. Might drag this grow out a little depending on how the seedlings do.

I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to run genetics from second generation genetics. Plus, if I get picked as a winner I'll win 7 packs of free seeds.

I figured I could get them to catch up to the SAJK while I figure out who's male and who's female. I'm not going to get gender testing done, I want see what these plants will do before deciding to save pollen. A couple look like they may have a little dwarfism, and one of them had some damage and appears to resemble fim or topped growth (self topper) likely caused by the insects.

Gotta get my crap together and figure out what I'm going to do. I'm not happy with the way the apples are growing, maybe these will take their place. I'll just run the apples longer than intended. I have no idea of the lineage of the tg5, it will be announced in several weeks by JD Short. Hopefully they will still fit in the category, if not oh well, I have to run these testers, but don't want you guys and gals to miss out on what I've got going on. Likely some plants will be culled or moved.

Still got the guava and Peyote Critical going on though. We put these plants on 12/12 already and took some cuts from Guava.

I was going to pollinate a branch of each if things go well, hopefully timing is okay. It might be too late in flower by the time I get pollen, we'll see, I'm still going to save some pollen for future projects.

No interesting facts in this post, just wanted to update. Happy growing!!

Legend has it that a young Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when he was bonked on the head by a falling piece of fruit, a 17th-century “aha moment” that prompted him to suddenly come up with his law of gravity. In reality, things didn’t go down quite like that. Newton, the son of a farmer, was born in 1642 near Grantham, England, and entered Cambridge University in 1661. Four years later, following an outbreak of the bubonic plague, the school temporarily closed, forcing Newton to move back to his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor. It was during this period at Woolsthorpe (Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667) that he was in the orchard there and witnessed an apple drop from a tree. There’s no evidence to suggest the fruit actually landed on his head, but Newton’s observation caused him to ponder why apples always fall straight to the ground (rather than sideways or upward) and helped inspired him to eventually develop his law of universal gravitation. In 1687, Newton first published this principle, which states that every body in the universe is attracted to every other body with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, in his landmark work the “Principia,” which also features his three laws of motion.

Now for an update.

Juggling sour apples,up potted to one gallon roots organics greenfields and top dressed with neem meal, oyster shell, ewc, and biolive.

We're probably going to be moving these around a bit, I'm half tempted to throw them on a 12/12 light schedule to determine gender.

The main reason I'm moving to soil is due to the testers I'm running and I'm too lazy to mix up nutrients for 15 plants. So we'll cut that in half and just grow the testers in coco. The apples will get put off to the side and veg until I find a space for them, who knows they might be all males. Knowing my luck it will be the dwarfed plants that end up being female.They already smell super good, I didn't get a distinct scent, but I could smell how pungent they were when transplanting.

Unfortunately gnats are still an issue in the coco, as I've put off getting h2o2 since I was transferring to soil. I have some miles on the way. Stratiolaelaps scimitus (formerly Hypoaspis miles) is a small (0.5 mm) light brown mite that lives in the top ½ in layer of soil. As a natural predator of fungus gnat pupae and of the snail parasite Riccardoella limacum it is used by gardeners and snail breeders for biological pest control. They should be here by Wednesday.

As for the testers, I've kept them out of the grow area for the time being to avoid any unwanted pest problems. Instead I stuck them in a milk crate and have a cheap blurple light sitting on top of the crate. It doesn't produce much heat and I think it only draws about 50-100 watts, not positive, but it isn't very powerful. The seedlings love it much better than the 2 desk lamps I was using.

Can't wait for second generation genetics to announce the lineage. So far I've noted 3 seedlings that had purple cotyledons, I'll keep them marked with a p and see if they produce the same color in flowers and leaves. I'm seeing some differences so far in the first set of serrated leaves. I won't note the differences until they've grown more than one set. There are too many variables to say it's genetics, once they get more leaves I'll note the morphology.

I only got two pictures because the third hadn't emerged from the coco, I'm still waiting on one more to break surface too. The one late comer didn't take long to catch up so hopefully the next one won't be too far behind.

I don't know if these are regular seeds or fems, I wasn't instructed to toss males. Here's what was sent.

I'm pretty meticulous, I'll note much more than that. I'll dm him and see what they are, for now I'm assuming they are fems.

If they are feminized seeds, I will be moving the apples around. Maybe switching to soil will give the testers a chance to catch up and I can run them all in the 5x5 sea of green style. I really wish I got these testers before the challenge started. I would have popped all 14 seeds and went ahead with a true sea of green style grow.

Anyways, things are moving along and I'm still procrastinating what I'll do with all these plants. I think this is the first time I've tried growing this many at once. I usually stagger my plants so I'm not overwhelmed with humidity, no space, or trimming so much flower. I am doing all the trimming myself and I'm dreading the work already lol. But no matter I have lots of work to keep me busy now and for a couple more runs. I'll be trying to clone some of these plants out, saving pollen, possibly pollinating, and work the lines I'm going to decide to breed with. That means pheno hunting and crop scouting. Growing cannabis is a lot of work but I enjoy it, just getting too old to do a lot of it by myself anymore lmao.

Going down to the old town road going to grooooooooow till I can't no more. 😆😂🤣. Happy growing!!

Day 7, they need more light. About to move them in the 5x5 with the SAJK.

Still not growing well, but we won't give up on them, they might even just go outside in the spring.

I'm so behind, and this challenge grow isn't going so well. Atleast I still have some plants to show you.

It's just too bad I had problems with the apples, I'll be trying to determine their gender soon. Then we'll decide which plants to keep and which ones to keep growing out.

We're about 7 days into flower with the Guava and Peyote Critical.

We'll just run these out for the remainder of the challenge and I'll update with everything else going on.

Fascinating facts about Guava: 1-10

The name “guava” comes through the Spanish “guayaba” which means “guava tree”. Apparently it has been adjusted in many European and Asian languages with similar meaning.

Guava is known as a “super fruit”. It has 4 times high vitamin C content than an orange, 3 times more proteins and 4 times more fiber than a pineapple. It has slightly more potassium than a banana.

Guavas are known for their seedy flesh. It actually contains 100-500 edible seeds in the center of it.

The guava plant has a lifespan of 40 years.

Here are around 150 varieties.

Although having a lot of benefits, surprisingly at one point in Philippine mythology the guava was forbidden. This trend actually changed when a child prayed to the gods to make the inedible fruit delicious so he could feed a beggar.

The reason behind calling it a super-fruit is, it has many vitamins and minerals but low fat and calories.

Do you know??? There are some invasive species of guava namely Strawberry guava and apple guava.

From around 150 species of guava some are endangered and Jamaica guava is already extinct due to habitat loss.

“Apple guavas” are the most commonly found and eaten guavas.

Happy growing!!

So, we found out what our testers lineage is. Lavender x Trinity x Blueberry f4. With the blueberry in there, I suppose it fits in this fruit salad category.

Built from strains around the world, Lavender by Soma Seeds has its origins from Super Skunk, Big Skunk Korean and Afghani Hawaiian. This strain, sometimes referred to as Lavender Kush, has dense buds that give off a floral and spicy aroma. It has a dark purple coloration at the ends of its leaves.

Trinity is a rare, and highly coveted Sativa dominant hybrid strain of cannabis. The taste of the smoke is sweetly berry with a hint of pine - no doubt a delicious combination. ... These effects make Trinity an excellent strain to help those suffering from depression or anxiety, and is great in relieving stress.

DJ Short Blueberry, or just Blueberry, is a popular Indica-dominant hybrid strain of cannabis. Despite the fact that this strain has been available on the market for more than 30 years, DJ Short Blueberry has managed to remain a classic strain of cannabis that sells impressively year after year. The original breeder behind this strain’s genetics is DJ Short, a US-based grower who has created infamous strains of cannabis since the 1970’s. To create this incredibly popular strain, DJ Short crossbred two popular Sativa plants, Thai and Purple Thai, with a powerful Afghani Indica. 

Now that we know a little about this strain, the purple cotyledons are a tell tale sign of it's genetic makeup. They're doing pretty well, slight calmag deficiency, which happens with all my coco seedlings for some reason. Buffered coco and 5ml a gallon calmag, we still get the wavy leaf everytime. I think these little ones are just heavy feeders.

I'm excited I had the opportunity to test second generation genetics.

The SAJK are doing their thing. Looking much better the last few days, though we have some slight variegation on one plant. I think it may be a male, not worth keeping for breeding. I actually think I may have a few males here, I'll keep the best one for future projects. Hopefully we get a couple females, not really looking promising though. Typically the stipules will be crossed on a female plant, not always, but typically.

Flowering plants needed some extra care, running into uptake issues because of fungus gnats. We really got hit hard, they infested my pots and just won't die. Time to order some pure crop 1. We top dressed ewc with langbeinite and drenched with liquid bone meal that I added to the water. Hopefully the make it to fruition. I'll post some pictures shortly, I haven't been taking many photos lately, I'll have to wait for lights on.

So far this challenge has been very challenging for me lol. I've made some rookie mistakes that cost me some time. I need more space and lights, I'm kind of tired of the whole tent thing. Wish I didn't let someone take over my shop, I could really use a sealed room right about now.

I'll post some pictures of the flowering plants with next update, along with some more interesting facts about some fruits that are in the names of these strains. Stay tuned!!

Happy growing!!

According to a few studies, a bowl of blueberries can help in boosting immunity and can reduce the risk of diabetes, obesity and heart diseases. Moreover, consuming a small portion of berries daily can help in strengthening the metabolism and prevent any kind of metabolic syndrome and deficiency.

And pictures as promised. Sorry they are mostly yellow, I just couldn't get a good angle, even with flash on.

Pest problems continue, gnats are out in full force outside as well. 40°f and they're just buzzing around like it's spring time or something. Can't wait for my pure crop 1 arrives.

It would seem that in winter almost all flying insects hibernate, but this is not the case for fungus gnats as they can withstand temperatures down to -25 degrees F (to say nothing of the comfortable environment in your house in winter).

Living in the Pacific Northwest doesn't help at all. It's constantly wet here, so they thrive even in the off seasons. Hopefully the pure crop 1 will work, I've thrown everything at these guys. I've used ftb from vegamatrix several times to no avail. https://www.webhydroponics.com/shop/vegamatrix-ftb/  

Now that I have some good guys in my soil, I don't want to use it, so pure crop 1 it is. Supposedly it's formulated to get rid of the bad pests and be safe to use with other biological controls (like predators).

I even removed the plants and set them outside while it was snowing. I raked the top few inches of soil up and saw a bunch of the miles mites and no larvae. However even after a few hours in the snow, the gnats wouldn't leave the top of the substrate. They would rather congregate on the surface than fly around. Even with the fan pointed on them they just buried themselves. I've thrown the book at these guys, it's getting very frustrating now.

Anyways, we got other plants that aren't infested so hopefully we can get things under control with some other preventative measures.

Happy growing!!