SouthEast Lights Journal

Round And Round, Blowin' In The Wind

By Charles U. Farley / June 21, 2022

Just a quick one here, with illustrative videos. Recently upgraded the internal circulation fans for both tents and veg closet. Migrated from Lasko clip fans to AC Infinity EC fans because of the IP44 moisture rating, reduced electrical consumption and fire resistant nature of EC powered equipment. Not to mention how much easier they are to adjust where I want air movement to go. First used this type of fan with the TerraBloom 8" EC exhaust fan for the original 4X4 tent and added another one after the addition of the 8X4 tent. I could not be more pleased with its operation and right now, I’m not even using the standalone controller, just the rheostat controllers that are always set to 10.

I set the fans up, did the final clip down before harvest, and put ‘em to sleep. The next morning when I unzipped the tent, I was greeted by the "swirling bud of happiness". As I starred at it, I noticed I was unconsciously moving my head in a circle, it was quite mesmerizing so early in the morning. What’s next, a voice in my head repeating, “You’re getting sleepy, sleepy… sleeeeeepy”? And no, that's not my hair in the Crossfire Hurricane video, my hair is gray, not brown.

If it takes tropical force winds to minimize mold and mildew, then tropical force winds are what the girls are gonna get.

Watch The Spinning Bud

Crossfire Hurricane Buds

SouthEast Lights Found In The Wild

By Charles U. Farley / June 12, 2022

One of the things I love most about cultivating and developing cannabis is I'm always learning something new and I'm frequently amazed at what these plants can do. Since the mid 80’s, I've rarely grown any cannabis outdoors because of security concerns. Two or three times for verification that SouthEast Lights would do well outside in a competitive, crowded environment and a couple of times when I had too many females and just couldn’t bear to terminate them. On my last grow of 2021, I decided to move from F9 to F10, so I allowed my best 2 staminate studs to have their way and get into the pistillate panties of the last remaining F5 gen girls I’ve got.

During this time, we had a remodel scheduled to transform our 70’s fiberglass bath/shower combo into a ceramic tile shower. Ass deep in the Pandemic, it was difficult to get scheduled and then took quite a long time to finish because of material shortages. Because access to the basement was needed for plumbing, I could not harvest the old ladies until long after they should have delivered. Many buds lost their cargo and seeds naturally dropped into the soil below. No big deal, I’ve got more seeds than I’ll ever use.

I keep all of my used soil to recycle for future grows, so I put the dirt from this harvest under the deck to use later on. Every spring I get new soil for the first grow of the season and unlike the past several years, Lowe’s and Home Depot (used to be known as Casa de Pot in adpc) had a lot of soil varieties on sale. Got some cheap Scott’s Moisture Control potting soil this year, so no need to add perlite or vermiculite for water retention. I’ve always had very good luck with Scott’s soil, even though they add “slow release” fertilizer, it’s never hot enough to burn the tips of my leaves.

The initial harvest of 2022 had just finished up, so it was time to take this year’s first gen soil and mix it into the used soil mound. I hadn’t been around to the side of the house where I keep my soil for quite some time, even though I had cut the grass on that end of the house several times. While emptying out the fabric pots, I looked over and got one hell of a surprise… a SouthEast Lights plant in the wild! Holy shit, this has never happened to me before in over 50 years of cultivating and developing cannabis. I have never discovered a cannabis plant that I didn’t previously plant, nurture and maintain, even when I was growing outside in the early 80’s.

It’s a damn fine plant as well, over 8 inches tall, five nodes, nice large, wide fan leaves. It’s standing tall and doing better than the dandelion and staghorn sumac right next to it. I had absolutely no idea this plant existed. It only gets about 3-4 hours of afternoon sunlight, has never been watered (we're in the initial stages of a pretty good drought, no rain in over 3 weeks) or fertilized, yet has developed and flourished completely on its own. Moving the root balls uncovered yet another little seedling that survived without ever being exposed to sunlight, water or anything else for that matter. This illustrates my goal of making SouthEast Lights a fucking Terminator variety of cannabis is a success.

Whether it's pistillate or staminate, this plant _will_ be a parent of the F11 generation.

What Makes SouthEast Lights Different From Northern Lights

By Charles U. Farley / May 30, 2022

SouthEast Lights has evolved from 10 Northern Lights seeds I obtained from Sensi via Gypsy Nirvana in 2000. Here was my goal when I started:

“My original purpose was to develop Sensi Seeds Northern Lights for the environment of the southeast U.S.. I knew it had been developed in the Pacific NW of the U.S. and then bred for seed development in the Sensi greenhouses of Amsterdam, both environments that are drastically different from the long, sunny growing seasons in the southeast U.S.. Much, _much_ respect to NL Seattle Greg for his decades of work creating Northern Lights. Much respect to Nevil Schoenmakers and Ben Dronkers for selectively developing and maintaining a magnificent, foundational strain of cannabis.

I decided to increase the typical vegetative phase by a month or two for increased root and leaf development, then slowly extended the flowering phase by an additional two months to provide adequate time for the buds to mature into ripe old age, for a total life-cycle of 6-7 months. Unlike the short growing season of the Pacific NW and the seed production greenhouses in Amsterdam, I gave time for the plants to develop their full potential. There was no need to top, prune, FIM, ScrOG or do anything else un-natural. I would never use chemicals or hormones for seed production. I knew I could make Northern Lights shine even brighter.”

I developed those 10 seeds in a 2 foot by 5 foot closet for over 18 years, before moving to 4X4 and most recently another 8X4 tent, because I'm an old fuck and gotta grow as much as I can, while I still can, so I never have to purchase cannabis. The closet was initially lit by a 1000 watt metal halide light and subsequently changed to 700 watt, high PAR LED coverage almost 10 years ago. The closet was ventilated with a 483 CFM radial fan and numerous holes were drilled between the floor joists to allow air from the basement to circulate and evacuate the heat produced by the lights.

As you’ll notice above, SouthEast Lights doesn’t burn or bleach out when placed close to a HID light source, as long as the tops are adequately ventilated of course. Also look at the branching pattern on the pic of the plant outside, where you will see absolutely no sign of topping or FIMing. The plants naturally grow this way for me, without the need for abuse or mutilation of the stem or shoots. The size and shape of the leaves have evolved in the past 10 years, especially since I learned to isolate the Type2/Indica dominate plants. The leaf shape has changed dramatically and is pretty atypical of NL... double serrated, wide and quite long as well.

I am currently on my F10 generation and from F1 on, for the last 22 years, the plants have:

1. Only received pure, mountain spring water

2. Never, fucking ever been FIM’d, ScrOG’d, topped, mutilated, or butchered to increase yield.

3. Never been subject to any chemical or hormonal manipulation for sexing or inducing polyploidy.

4. Only received massive amounts of HID lighting from both MH and LED lights.

5. Been grown in standard, cheap potting soil (currently Scott’s Moisture Control because it was on sale) and receive absolutely no fertilizer until at least 1 full grow has been completed with the new soil. During subsequent grows (as I recycle the soil) I use minimal amounts of Peter’s 10-10-10 when needed.

6. Gone through extensive wet/dry cycles where the soil is allowed to not only be saturated but to dry out almost completely as well,

7. Never been subjected to 24/0 lighting or rushed/forced flowering in less than 90 days of vegging. I don't fuck or abuse my plants for any temporary, short term gain. Sensi’s current website says the flowering time for Northern Lights is 45-50 days, SouthEast Lights would not be anywhere near completion in that time frame. There’ve been times when I could barely even sex a plant 45 days after flip, and I know what to look for.

8. Never been babied, coddled or otherwise given any type of special care, whatsoever. Most growers would be mortified at how brutal I have been with not only clones but sprouts as well. I'm reminded of a Saturday Night Live skit from the 70's comparing Lamaze birthing with SNL's version, which were just a wee bit different. No sterile cuttings of clones, no reduced lighting during germination or rooting, no support poles or netting, none of that bullshit that treats cannabis like a violet instead of poke sallet. SouthEast Lights is a fucking Terminator version of cannabis that will take whatever abuse, neglect or mismanagement a dumbass grower can give and still survive.

9. Only herm'd once, on one branch, on a 4 year old clone, after a week long power outage, in a 40 degree closet.

Notice what I haven't mentioned? Nothing about THC percentage, terpine profile, smell, color, resin coating, leaf/calc ratio, etc. Know why? I don't give a shit. I don't care if my cannabis smells like a "sweet blueberry forest after a spring rain at sunrise" or like SouthEast Lights... almost odorless. I also don't care whether it's gold, green, red, purple or is organically grown with pure, unadulterated bat shit that has been mined by gnomes and elves in forests of the Pacific NW. What I care about is how SouthEast Lights makes me feel. And this should come as no surprise I'm sure, but it makes me feel... _good_, and that's what matters to me.

Most importantly, I’ve not only taken care of, but I have _cared_ for these plants, for many years now. They have decades of love, care, discriminative selection and complete attention in an ideal yet very challenging environment. As Owsley Stanley said so many years ago, “…the Princess of the plant world, who gives us a wonderful gift in return for our care and attention.” I’m a bit more direct and less eloquent than zBear so I'm not sure how to end this post. Should it be, "I take care of the plant that takes care of me." or "When the plant is not forced to do things unnatural, it will become what you want it to be."? How about:

"That’s what makes SouthEast Lights different from Northern Lights!"

It's Been Awhile But I'm Back Online

By Charles U. Farley / April 20, 2022

Well, it’s been about 3 years and 8 months since I posted anything on this site and a lot has happened in that time frame, obviously. Doing a Journal article a couple times a week was getting to be a lot of work and not the fun it was when I originally started this thing. I was kinda running out of things cannabis related to post about. So I went to areas that are quite interesting to me, such as music, cosmology and time travel, but I’m sure will be quite boring to our kids, g-kids and g-g-kids (whenever they read this in the future). Then a series of events happened that re-arranged my priorities totally away from this website but now I’m back to a place where I can devote some time to it. Not going to try and summarize almost 4 years in a few Journal posts but I’ll use this “I’m Back” post as an outline about what has happened and what I'll write about. I’ll go into more detail later but here are some things that happened in the last 4 years.

Let’s see, I was 90% sure I had HPV induced esophageal (throat) cancer, so that was the primary reason I quit updating the site. I’ll write much more about that situation later on but the great news is I did _not_, in fact, have cancer but had scarring of my oropharyngeal area from gastric reflux. There is nothing in life that can re-arrange your priorities more than having cancer, or thinking you do. Quite coincidentally, I had begun reading Michael Pollan’s book How To Change Your Mind, where he described how hallucinogens are now being used to treat PTSD and End of Life issues. Fascinating reading and I fully intended to get in touch with MAPS (Multi-Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies) to determine where I could find a participating physician in my area. One of our kids just retired from a 24 year career in the Air Force and is having severe issues with PTSD, so this subject is very, very important to me. The mantra that helped me has been, "...it wasn't normal to go home with brains on your shoe." After finding out I didn’t have cancer, my interest in psychedelics was still piqued and several years later I have been able to source some cubies (psilocybin mushrooms), so I’ll write much more about this in the future but I've discovered a profound "Attitude of Gratitude".

First USB Micro Photo

Old Bud From Old Plant

Young Bud - Same Plant

Because of my background as a Respiratory Therapist (RRT), I knew I would be spending a lot of time in what can best be described as a massive mask/sarcophagus, getting radiation treatments. Since I didn’t want to be coughing and hacking (from cannabis vaping) during these long, drawn out procedures, I decided to totally quit vaping and go all edibles, all the time. I’ve only vaped once since then, for a celebration I’ll write about a little later, and don’t miss it at all. However, it is a different and varied experience compared to smoking/vaping. I did oatmeal cannacookies for a couple of years but eating 4 cookies a day was a bit too much expense in vanilla extract and caloric intake, so now I ingest 1 gram of decarboxylated cannabis, four times a day, encapsulated in a gelatin cap. Because of my tremendous ECS (endo cannabinoid system) tolerance, I keep a low to moderate level of being high, _all_ of the time. This is in spite of, and no doubt because of, ingesting twenty eight grams of cannabis every week, every month, every year for the last 3.5 years. That’s just one of the very cool things that you can do once you are _retired_. I’ll get much more into detail on that subject a little later on but for my wife and I, being retired is, quite simply, indescribably fantastic. My wife drove 2 hours every day, 4 days a week, for thirty five years, to work at the hospital. Now she does not. I just can’t adequately describe how great that is!

Things quieted down for a couple of months after that scare and then shit got real. One of our kids had a benign, yet very horribly placed brain tumor, an acoustic neuroma. Severely complicating matters was the fact that I was not communicating with her at all when she got the diagnosis, for reasons that are much too complicated and far too difficult to get into right now. Craniotomy (brain surgery) at Duke, extensive rehab and the complete loss of hearing in one ear was the result and now not only is she back to normal (except for the hearing) but we are communicating again! It didn’t happen immediately but with the invaluable assistance of her husband, I now have a relationship with her. Unfortunately, between all of the stresses they were under, the marriage did not survive. He continues, and will always be, a part of our family and I have made that fact abundantly clear to him and everyone else in the family.

Time to re-direct this back to cannabis and there have been quite a few changes in that regard the past several years as well. Technology marches on and I’ve migrated from burple LED lighting to SMB (surface mounted board) full spectrum LED lighting and added a 8X4 to the 4X4 tent in the basement. I don’t know how long I can keep on physically growing cannabis but I decided since I’m in such great shape now, I’m going to grow as much as I can, for as long as I can, and then store the excess for when I’m too old to grow. Regardless of how much excess I grow, I will still never, ever sell any cannabis product. It’s just not how I am structured. One thing I want to set straight is I have no problem whatsoever with anyone who sells cannabis related products. When I posted my "Coming Out" post on the various cannabis related fora when I started this site in 2018, an asshat posted something to the effect of... "You're such a hypocrite for not selling anything cannabis related but you think it's great if your kids do after your dead". For fuck sake, I've bought cannabis since 1967 from many, _many_ "dealers" and we've both profited from the give and take exchange. It all goes back to the "If you can't do the time, don't commit the crime" thing my old man drilled into my head as a kid. I would never, fucking _ever_, be a "rat" if I got arrested. They may get my ass for possession but I would _never_ do anything that any logical human being would consider "dealing". So I made the decision when I was 16 years old that I would never, _ever_ do anything that would justify a real, legitimate arrest for anything related to drug dealing. I knew people who became very influential with "organized crime" in Howard Beach and Bayside from my time at The Beachcomber. Don't want to pat myself on the back but if money was my motive, I could have made a _tremendous_ amount of money (hundreds of thousands of 70's dollars, Google for what that would be today) in cocaine with just a couple of "deals" with the people I knew in Miami in the 70's.

I did not.

Kiddies, Google Anthony Strollo. That guy's son was one of my best friends in Miami back in the day and like me, he never fucking _ever_ dealt any amount of drugs, not one fucking deal. He's dead now, so I can talk about him without worrying. I can guaran-fucking-tee, Tony saved many more lives as an RRT than his father killed as a member of "organized crime". One thing he taught me by example, freedom is better than money.

In future posts, I’ll get into the vast differences and challenges of growing in the tents down in the basement versus the original 5X2 grow closet up here in the house. Never, ever had any problem with powdery mildew or botrytis in the closet but growing down in the basement tents has been quite challenging. Can’t really control the humidity down in the 2200 sq. ft. basement and temps in the winter are usually in the 40’s-60’s with 40-70% humidity, so it’s a ripe environment for mold and mildew. After trying a couple of "organic” solutions, that were less than effective in my environment, I settled on a solution of potassium bicarb, castile soap and olive oil that works like a charm. I’ve never been into organics. I’m a chemical/science kind of guy, so I know that plant cells couldn't care less about how the N, P, K and trace minerals they require are generated. The cells only care that those minerals are actually present, so they can be absorbed and converted into energy via photosynthesis. Whether the N, P, and K are produced in a chemical reaction or derived from bat shit does not matter to the cells of a cannabis plant. But I know bat shit has a whole lot more unknown chemicals/substances in it than Peter’s (now Jack’s) plant food does, so I’ll stick to chemicals of known origin and composition. Between the KHCO3, ladybugs, and constant tropical force winds engulfing the colas from 8 new 315 CFM fans, I hope I've got a handle on botrytis.

One marvelous thing that happened during this time was the birth of what will be our last granddaughter, at least they think so (Mom and Dad are both over 40 and had a difficult time getting pregnant). We’ve now got 8 grandkids and 2 great grand kids in addition to our 4, so this late addition has been a fantastic surprise. Flew up to Chicago and had time to bond with her a bit and it was great being in Chicago again. After I got back, being in the celebratory mood and knowing that I didn’t have throat cancer, I decided to vape again. Had some BHO I'd made a while back so I mixed that in with some SouthEast Lights and vaped up. No doubt a combo of heightened expectations and massive tolerance to cannabis but I didn’t get any more high than I already was. After four or five lung-bulgers, I just didn’t feel that much different. That’s when I decided I was never going to vape or smoke cannabis again. For me, the physical toll on my lungs is just not worth the minor effect vaping now has on me, since I went all edibles, all the time. I started using cannabis at 13, was a regular user at 16 and a multi-daily user since college. Over 50 years of smoke and vapor is enough for my lungs to handle, so it was time to stop.

New Closet Light

New Tent And New Lights

Old Tent and New Lights

Damn, this is getting long and I don’t want the return post to be a wall of words so time to wrap this up. I’ll put some recent photos in between paragraphs to make the page more readable. Still rocking with the Nikon 4300 point and shoot digital and since I'm using full spectrum instead of burple LED's, no need to do a white balance correction before each shot! This little gem is still working after over 20 years of use but has a way to go to beat the longevity of my 1971 Nikon FTN. Damn, it'd be so much easier to use my wife's Canon Rebel but the GPS data is a deal breaker when posting pics on the Web, since I don't want to go through the time and effort of stripping out EXIF data. Just acquired a USB digital microscope, so I'll put some ultra close-up bud shots up that'll look a bit different from the 4300 close-ups (if I used smiley emoticons, I'd put one here).

It's been a bit invigorating getting back to writing about cannabis again! The plan is to try and post at least one Journal post a month, concentrating on cannabis and not veering off into subjects that profoundly interest me but will be boring for my kids, gkids and ggkids. I'll start lurking around various cannabis discussion websites such as rollitup, mrnice, reddit, and icmag to see how bad the cannabis cultivation fora have devolved in the last 3.5 years. That will motivate me to concentrate on cannabis rather than other subjects that interest me like music, space, or time travel. I miss the alt.drugs.pot.cultivation and alt.drugs.psychedelics newsgroups on Usenet, where I could filter out the morons, gain knowledge from the masters, and feel a sense of online community and purpose.

I’ve tried to hit the high points of the last several years but there’s been just too much that has happened to try and summarize in one post. I just remembered, oh yeah, during this time I was bitten by a rattlesnake cleaning out a drainage pipe, we’ve experienced a killer pandemic that totally fucked our normal way of life and had a near coup that came closer to succeeding that anyone ever thought possible. The video below is a song I heard before I went to see the ENT doctor and, as usual for me, the lyrics just about slapped me in the fucking face as I was listening. Coincidentally, maybe even synchronicitous, the composer/singer of this tune, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, is from the same small neighborhood I grew up in Louisville, the Highlands. It pretty much summarizes my philosophy on life and things I've tried to teach our kids, gkids, and ggkids: love, family, communication, independence, disappointment, preparation, perseverance, self-reliance, hard work, celebration… it’s all there. When my time comes (the last time I posted here, I thought I had cancer), I have no doubt I'll be One With The Light.

But that time is not right now so I'll just... Be Here Now

If You Don't Speak Out - Video by theboognish1

By Charles U. Farley / April 20, 2022

No compromise
But willing to sacrifice
Believe what you want
Go on and be who you are
Go out and get what you want
Full of life

The stone is thrown, it's coming fast
The next thing you know
It's crashing thru the glass
Now we're down on our knees
Picking up the scraps
Whatever it takes we're gonna build it back

If you don't speak out
We can't hear it
Our love is always here
Here in spirit
And all those who came before
Here in spirit

No compromise
But willing to sacrifice
If the means to an end's in sight
And once the work is done
Go celebrate what you like
Go on and dance through the night

Go on be one with the light
Full of life
The stone is thrown, it's coming fast
The next thing you know
It's crashing thru the glass
Now we're down on our knees

Picking up the scraps
Whatever it takes we're gonna build it back
And don't you know you can call on me
Here in spirit
Call on me
Yeah