SouthEast Lights Journal

Roots Are The Key To Quality Cannabis

By Charles U. Farley / January 28, 2023

As I’ve posted before, the most basic formula for the successful development of cannabis is roots + leaves = flowers. From the initial emergence of the tap root from the seed until the final cut of the stalk at harvest, everything I do is focused on the development of the root system. Since I grow in dirt, it’s impossible to discuss root development without mentioning soil. I have advocated since the 90’s for using whatever brand of good, quality potting soil that is on sale. Since I’m an old fuck and my memory sucks, the only name brands I can remember using besides Scott’s is a Lowe’s brand called Sta-Green but I’ve used generic Wal-Mart potting soil as well. As long as it’s primarily peat based, it’s really hard to go wrong with most commercially available potting soil. I just empty out the bags, saturate the hell out of it with spring water to get it used to the pH of our water and to wash out the soluble fertilizer they add. I’m aware the current trend is coco coir but I still stick to peat based soils. If it ain’t broke, I don’t try to fix it. I usually add some vermiculite for water retention and even with the spring water flush, additional fertilizer is seldom needed during the initial grow.

Over-fertilization is second only to over-watering as the main cause of failure when growing cannabis. Overzealous growers just love their plants to death. In addition to soil, it’s impossible to discuss the development of the root system without emphasizing the effect watering has on the development of roots. If soil is completely and constantly saturated with water, the roots will rot and die, as will the entire plant. Allowing the soil to completely dry out until the plant wilts will result in the death of the plant as well. There have to be periods of time where the soil is allowed to dry out, shrink a bit and develop air pockets around the roots. One of the most frequent questions new growers have when first starting out is, “How much do I water?” There is absolutely no way that question can be answered, because every growing environment is quite unique, given the variables of temperature, humidity, air velocity, etc. After a few grows, you get where you can tell when to water, based on the overall weight of the container. Almost every new grower uses too much water, which causes a cascade of negative effects that usually mimic nutrient deficiencies.

I saturate soil before transplanting clones or seedlings and I don’t water again for about a week. I'll spritz the plants every couple of days but I don’t add any additional water to the soil. When I do water, I use just enough to rehydrate the soil without saturating it. Alternating periods of adequate water with periods of dryness drives the development of roots. I think fabric containers are one of the very best advancements in the development of cannabis in the past 10 years. I still see online pics and YouTube videos where people are actually proud of having a mass of roots circling the bottom and sides of a plastic container. Guess where those roots aren't? They're not encased in the soil that's in the container, where they should be. Instead, the roots are wrapped around each other and only exposed to the sides and bottom of the container, where they cannot absorb any water or nutrients. The roots may be in a 5 gallon container but they are only exposed to a gallon of soil. That doesn't happen with fabric containers. When roots in fabric containers reach the side and bottom, the roots self terminate, which forces them to branch out _inside_ the container, instead of just circling around. With fabric containers, the roots are 100% exposed to the soil in the container. That's why I use them.

Rooting Clones

By Charles U. Farley / January 12, 2023

As a follow-up to the post I did on cloning last month, I wanted to further illustrate how important getting clones successfully rooted is to the success of any cannabis development project. Learning how to clone cannabis plants was probably the most beneficial thing I've ever done to increase the stability and uniformity of SouthEast Lights. The ability to reproduce a single, unique cannabis plant that is genetically identical to the source plant, for quite literally several years, is simply amazing when you stop to think about it. Transforming an annual plant into a perenial plant is pretty awesome.

Cloning in the winter is quite challenging because of the vast temperature fluctuations, even inside the clone closet. When it's in the 70's one day and below zero the next, the heating mat can have difficulty maintaining a constant 80 degree temp at root level when the circulating air is coming from an unheated basement. When you mix in vast variances in humidity as well, clones can have a difficult time growing in this environment. Surviving is one thing, thriving is quite another.

Just like seedlings I develop, I don't believe there should be any babying or coddling with clones. That's why I stopped using Clonex, not because I thought there were any adverse affects from using auxins to stimulate root development, but because I didn't want SouthEast Lights to become a fragile, weak cannabis variety that had to be nurtured and treated like an African Violet just to survive. I learned that leasson from Vic High's experience with Blueberry. Notice in the last photo how the roots just drive down into the soil, even though the clone plug has been pushed up to the top of the soil through vegetative growth? This clearly illustrates just how strong the "drive to survive" is in SouthEast Lights.

Hindu Kush Purples?

By Charles U. Farley / December 22, 2022

I've been developing cannabis for over 50 years now, the first 25 with bag seed from Jamaica and Columbia, in addition to 25 with Sensi's Northern Lights. Since I had previously isolated and reproduced the Type I Sativa, Type II Indica and Type IV Hybrid cannabis that went into the creation of Northern Lights, the last year or two I've been able to experiment with each type, especially the Type II Indica. This is the first time I've ever had purple buds.

Purple Pistillate

Purple Staminate

Purple Buds

The Type I Sativa experiments were less than successful because of the height limitations of the tents and my refusal to top, supercrop or otherwise abuse cannabis. If I can ever legally grow outside, I can't wait to grow these without the height limitations of a tent. The Type IV hybrid is easily reproducible, it's what most would consider Northern Lights. I've been concentrating on the Type II Indica phenos, because I think that's what makes Northern Lights so special.

I've always believed, and know for a fact, that the color and smell of cannabis has absolutely _no_ bearing whatsoever on potency. Drill down to the beginning section of this Journal, where I write about my experiences with Northern Lights and Skunk from the Blunt Brothers in Vancouver, when my wife and I went on an Alaska cruise in '99. Suffice it to say, the Skunk looked and smelled _so_ much better than the Northern Lights but it was the Northern Lights that got us the most elevated... it wasn't even close. I had previously isolated what structurally looked like almost pure, Type II Indica pistillate and staminate plants, so it was time make some seeds. During flowering, with temps almost always above 70 degrees, I noticed a distinct purple tinge to the staminate plants first, then the pistillate plants.

I took the seeds from the union of those plants and created the plant that produced the buds you see above. I have never, ever heard of purple Northern Lights. So I did another in-depth search and found, much to my surprise (because I've done a _lot_ of Internet searches on Northern Lights), there's indication Nevil may have introduced some of his Afghani males from the Hindu Kush region with the female Northern Lights plants he received from NL Seattle Greg, when Nevil was standardizing and homogenizing Northern Lights. This process proved something I've thought for a while:

Even with one of the most stable, reproducible and potent versions of cannabis ever created, it still wants to revert back to Mommy and Daddy.

Nikon 4300 Retired!

By Charles U. Farley / November 13, 2022

One of the things I'm most proud about with this website is the quality of photography. Until now, the 2002 Nikon 4300 point and shoot digital camera, with a massive 4.1 megapixels, has provided all of the photos you've seen. Designing a website to properly display photography is much, _much_ more difficult than most people are aware of. Photos have to look good not only small 4" phone displays but on the massive 27" monitors most professionals use as well. Not to mention how fast the Internet connection is that people use to access the site, which directly affects how long it takes the page to display.

We're on a dismal 6 megabits per second DSL line but most of the U.S. is on much faster connections, obviously. File sizes for high resolution photos are quite large, so it's always a compromise between a fast download or a high quality image. I've always emphasized how the site looks on large monitors rather than phones, because that's where you can see the actual quality of the photography. I want to provide the highest quality photography I can but keep file sizes as small as possible.

From the first time I ordered cannabis seeds from Jock in the Netherlands, via the a.d.p.c Usenet group in '98, I've always been exceedingly paranoid about doing anything that could possibly reveal my physical location. Security has always been my highest priority because it's not paranoia if they _really_ are out to get you. Phones or digital cameras with GPS capability have never been used on this site... until now. The 4300 started to act hinky when trying to focus up close, leading to much frustration. Since I was using an original Pixel 1 phone, it was time to upgrade. So I'm reluctantly retiring the 4300 because it's just so damn easy to get outstanding photography, in great file sizes, with absolutely no compromise in security with my new phone.

This picture was produced by a Pixel 7 phone.

How Do You Do A Sativa in a 4X4?

By Charles U. Farley / September 29, 2022

That last post was a mind bender, wasn't it? It was truly revolutionary for me and I've gained Inspirational Clarity. Time to get back to cannabis.

I remember how excited I was 4-5 years ago when I first isolated the Type I/Sativa portion of the Northern Lights ancestry. I hadn't done any Type I/Sativa dominate variety of cannabis since I started developing Northern Lights seeds in 2000. Before I acquired the NL, I spent over 20 years developing Sativa dominate Jamaican and Columbian cannabis from seeds I brought up from Florida when I moved to the mountains in 1981, in addition to a couple of generations of Sensi's Jack Herer. I was _so_ hoping for a Thai stick type experience but, given my tremendous THC tolerance I'm sure, the high was less than I expected. But I was intrigued by the vast structual differences between the easily reproducible Type II/ Indica and the gangly yet dense Type I/Sativa leaning buds I'd isolated.

One thing that I noticed early on when developing NL was there wasn't a large amount of stretch when initially putting the plants into the flowering cycle. When working with the Jack Herer I got from Jock in '99, the stretch was definitely something I had to plan for when determining the best time to initiate flowering.

With the passage of over 20 years, I'd forgotten how much a Type I/Sativa stretches during flowering.

As you can tell from the photos, these plants stretched all the way up to the top of the 6' tent. While I have absolutely no delusions the plants I isolated are identical to the Thai/Hawaiian plants that initially were used in the creation of NL, I'm still amazed at how much height they gain during flowering. But I'm definitely a Type II/Indica kinda guy, so from here on out, I'm going to concentrate on the Type II/Indica variety because that is what makes me feel the best.