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Soft Secrets
shoot up to two metres in height. When they are 15-20 centimetres, we stimulate them to bloom. That depends a bit on how they were delivered. We have an old trick up our sleeves if they shoot up too fast and by the third week they look like they are going to be a problem. Then we just switch off the light for two or three days. Doing this will drag the last of the growth out of them.
When growing on soil we try and make sure that the EC does not rise higher than 1.0 or 1.2. if you then subtract the 0.3 for the salts already present in the (Brabant) mains water that leaves 0.9 at most left over for your nutrient salts – your fertiliser, in other words – that your plant loves so much. It also depends a bit on the size of the pots you are using, but in any case from the fourth week onwards
Genuine novelty is rare these days; most new strains are simply old ones dressed up in new clothes.
Arjan’s Hawaiian Snow
for all this. You should not forget that if you do five back crosses, you will also be busy for five times 13 weeks. Plus on top of that a couple of weeks each time waiting for the seeds to be sorted through and checked, so you’re looking at a two or three year job. Breeding seeds is not easy. That’s why no-one does it except for a few freaks like me. A number of years ago, ‘Wageningen’ (Dutch agricultural institute – ed) organised a trip for a number of scientists to Peru. There, they found 60 breeds
air circulation is switched on for a shorter or longer period, depending on the air’s moisture level. What I also find very important in air management is that the plants are kept in gentle movement, especially when they are very young; in the first 14 days I give them a stiff breeze, which stimulates them to put down firm roots and develop a sturdy stem, so that they develop a good ‘blood supply’ from their bottoms to their tips. Later, I’ll turn the air circulation levels down a bit, but I still try and keep
With my Hawaïan Snow variety, I harvested 4550 grams from 33 plants in 12 weeks. That is 137 grams per plant of potato that they did not recognise and which they needed back home for crossing with varieties like the Bintje. The Bintje needs the application of six different pest control agents to reach maturity. Everything eats it up: moulds, worms, beetles. But if you now take an original potato from the wild, determine the genetic make-up of it and back cross it, perhaps you can come up with a newlyinvigorated Bintje. Then there is no need to go genetically modifying it. Air is usually the biggest problem in many spaces into which I have been called to cast my eye over. The in-flow is not good and the out-flow is not good either. In nine out of ten cases it is not possible, but the best way of ensuring good air is to have a compartment dedicated to air supply. A space about one third the size of your grow room is ideal. It’s really good if you can supply your space with oxygen from this compartment (which you can also store your mother plants in) even during winter when the outside air is cold, because you can also raise the temperature of the air a bit before it enters your grow space. For me the optimal temperature for growing is 27 degrees Celcius. If you’re growing a Haze variety, this can be a little bit lower. I keep the night-time temperature at around 20, 21 degrees. The air should be kept almost continuously in circulation. Do so stepwise by using a timer and a thermostat, so that if the air at night falls under a certain temperature, every 15 or 30 minutes the
a good, even movement in my plants. Continue this, applying a light breeze to your entire crop, for about three-quarters of every hour. I always have a ventilator pointing both inside and outside. The ventilator set up to blow outwards is always located a bit higher than the ventilator rigged to blow inwards. Often because I want to create a bit of low pressure in the grow room so that I do not get any problems with odour so easily, because despite all the apparatuses and filters we still have to remove this via the air circulation system. So a little bit of low pressure is always nice.
We could go on for ever discussing the issue of water. The ideal is of course water with a salt value (EC) of 0. It is a difficult story. You need a piece of apparatus for reverse osmosis and then you throw 50-60 percent of your good water away because you are going to bring the values down to zero and you have to add all types of stuff as well to optimise the water. If you look at the water in the Netherlands then you see that Amsterdam has what we might call the worst water with an EC of 0.6, 0.7, sometimes as high as 0.8. What that means is that I’m quite happy where I am, down South in Brabant where we have an EC of 0.3. Then you’re well sorted. We work with an A- and a B-component and we finish these off with some special acid. For soil, not in the first few weeks. What we do though is finish the EC at 1. With hydro, it all depends on which variety we are planning to grow. There are plants which we can take the EC up to 1.5 and there are also plants which we can take as high as 2.1 above the EC that the water measures in the place where you grow space is. With the pre-fertilised soil from Henk (available from the Eveleens brothers in Aalsmeer) it looks a bit strange to be only giving water in the beginning, but after the fourth week we do begin to give a little extra nutrient. Just a bit of A- and Bcomponent nutrient. The last week we do nothing, just rinse the set up through with water. The plant is then finished. If you’ve got all the factors for a good growth and bloom present, our list of five, then you’re running at 100 percent and the plant can utilise a lot more of everything. Plus at any moment that it needs extra energy, it has some at its disposal. If your air management or your genetics or your water is not optimal, then your plants will need longer in their pots, which is a waste of your time.
we’re going to be doing it. The plants grow until the eleventh week, maybe the twelfth, so we’re applying fertiliser for a good seven weeks. In addition, we also have to take account of the time of the year. We do have to adjust the pH, but not every application of water has to contain nutrients, even in the winter. Very roughly speaking, we add nutrients every third or fourth watering. The pH is set at about 6.5, although when using hydro this might be 5.7 or 5.8. Especially in the first three or four weeks, the plant is not good at regulating this automatically. After four weeks it stabilises itself. The first week we often have to fix it at 5.5. If we are planning to rinse the system, then we rinse it back down even as far as 5.2 or 5.1, because after a few hours it will be back up at 5.7 to 5.8. Within a half day it can shoot up another half a point higher. If we are successful, then we can often end up low, at around 5.7 or 5.8. The trick is to rinse the system well. If you see after four weeks that the plant can keep its pH consistent then the EC will start to rise. When this happens you will have to rinse the system, as this can retard the growth. And so by rinsing we can return the EC back towards 1.0 and the pH back down to 5.2. We can let the system fill and empty two or three times, just like in the ebb and flood technique, until we have the EC back in the 1.3 –1.4 range and we have the pH at 5.5. This is good. Then we let the mats dry out for three to five days. So we don’t dribble water on them and we don’t drench them! Then we just repeat the normal cycle for a week, until we see that the salt has accumulated again. Once this rises above the 2.0 mark, we begin the rinse cycle again. We keep doing this until about ten days before the harvest, after which we only apply water.
I also try to keep the input as flexible as possible. In the winter for example, if it is very cold, then I pump things up a bit higher inside than in the summer months. If the cold air were allowed straight onto the plants, they would not find it very pleasant. Then I try and mix it up a bit above the plants, and then simple air circulation will keep things agreeable. But we all know of course that warm, old air rises, so you want to expel as much of this as you can. As for the air moisture, try and keep it steady around the 50-55 percent level. Even during the growth period. This in our case is pretty short, in the worst case no longer than ten days. With the Sativas, preferably much less. Because these shoot up so fast we should let them have only five days’ growth, tops. By then they will be nicely well rooted and they will soon
The famous White Shark from Arjan took the Highlife Supercup 2005
Hawaiian Snow
