hey @HogStix. i am using a method propounded by @SlowOldGuy. he says flood/drought/flood which i’m doing, kinda… have put into solo cups and it is 10 days and they are almost dry enough for first watering. but he also said that when you have to water your plants every day or every other then it is time to repot to bigger pot. just a heads up for you as i don’t know anything about the variables of where you are at in the grow now.
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I’m 3 weeks after 12/12 and i’m already in 5 gallon buckets wasn’t planning on another transplant unless i really have to. I do wish i had cloth pots,next time i will. I have been watering mine until i get a run off every other day they been taking half gallon each. I just bought a moisture probe and a day after there on the very dry end so i’m gona increase water in the morning for breakfast and see what happens.
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sounds like they got pretty good size during veg. i will be doing a short veg so i’m pretty sure my 5 gallon cloth pots will do for me. Amanda, the cutie that is helping me from the treehouse is using strictly 7 gallon cloth pots for her grows now. she goes germ to solo’s for seedling stage to 3 gallon for veg to 7 gallon for flowering now. but i know she does 2 or 2 and half months for veg.
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About 2 1/2 to 3 months veg is perfect.
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Hiya, just joined. I can provide a pdf of the original ‘booklet’ which will be small enough a file to upload.
The pruning system incl. a graph, which I do not have. I’ll start work on the
photocopying of the pages that I do have right away.
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Perhaps this looks familiar enough for me to go ahead?
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howdy @lakeviewvicky. welcome to the forums. i would really appreciate you loading those to here, but i can tell by the cover it is different than the one i had. mine had a hand drawn description of where to trim the plants to force the other side to throw a branch. you might have that in this one, but i don’t remember the page you have shown first. keeping in mind this was thirty years ago and i’m an old old stoner lol. but this title page is different than the, and i’m gonna guess here, 4 other i’ve seen since i’ve started looking for the one i had.
but, on another note… welcome to the forums, this is a great place to visit and learn how to grow weed. i have a black thumb and i’ve still gotten a decent reward from my first two tries. lots of very knowledgeable people on here with a wide variety of experience and everyone is very friendly. if you have a journal started for your grow, tag me in please (put and @ sign before my name and it will have a dark border letting you know that it worked.
I can vouch for your post and appreciate your link to the JJ Demarco storyline-its all true. Unfortunately I don’t think I have any of the original materials but I have not looked inside the storage pod it’s in for at least 25 years. I will provide anything I may find here if requested or relevant.
My renewed interest in this topic is mostly due to the current legal changes in my home state. I am kind of excited to see what I may be able to accomplish at my advanced age (turning 63 this year)
Your comments regarding pruning a sativa in the Tron took me WAY back and that’s ABSOUTELY true; pruning is key to the Demarco method and I think you are in elite company for having followed it pretty explicitly.
I still have my original Tron with the 3 u shaped bulbs. The side panels need to be refurbished as I don’t think I was able to care for it before storing it (I was thinking of getting a car detailer to advise me on materials to replace the faded “mirror” interior of those panels) If that is successful I will proceed further.
I’ve moved only three times in 30 years but the Tron went with me (don’t know why) every time.
Hell, I once threw out all my art work/doodles/drawings once because I read Jim Morrison did that with his poetry at some point. Unfortunately (unlike poetry that has been rehearsed and edited many times in your head) original art is impossible to replicate. My brother told me once (a more gifted person altogether) that of all the shit I’d thrown out, my artwork/doodling were probably the tiniest space hogs in my cluttered life. (He’s probably smarter than I as well)
Sorry for the digression.
Thanks for the informative post and I’m looking forward to learning from you all…
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neat post bud @Glam welcome to the forums. that sh!t was great back then and i wish to the big guy that i still had the phototron. but… they have a lot better tech going on now. yes, the only reason i got what i got out of the phototron was because i followed the directions explicitly and i’m pissed that i have to pay attention now, but… you can grow great pot now. IF, you have a phototron now, you have to have the same crap he sent you to make it work right. there are lots of way to grow great pot now. it won’t be like the old phototron, but it can still be exemplary!
Thanks for the welcome and the reply. I finally broke down and unpacked it. I did find every single piece of literature which kind of blew my mind…of course I’ve got all the original documentation for my Sansui stereo gear from Okinawa (circa 1977-78) as well.
I got that shit out of mothballs around 2012/13 after my mom passed. I got a bit of disposable income and finally bought a pair of decent speakers for the system. Of course the original plan was for a pair of JBL L65 Jubals but I got reunited with some former co-workers from my prior duty station MCAS El Toro and started running with the wrong crowd AGAIN, which was why I requested orders to Okinawa; to get away from the drugs etc in California.
Don’t get me wrong, as someone posted on my FB recently, “everything was great in 1978” I was just too young and free to roam the world for the first time.
I was and am a connoisseur of sorts; maybe a budget connoisseur. Anyway, I never got my JBL’s.
I finally found a tech here that could check my gear and properly diagnose it-that’s a whole other story. He’s amazingly talented and last of that breed-can fix anything electrical but it’s like fishing “time on the water” that’s irreplaceable. Like they say if you read the instructions that’s knowledge; if you don’t, that’s EXPERIENCE!!!
(See Van Morrison’s album “Sense of Wonder” Let the Slave…)
Anyway the stereo equipment is now in a storage unit and I’m probably gonna end up giving it to my son who’s working hard to get his undergraduate degree in ComputerScience/Engineering in Canada. He is married to a real smart young woman who is working on her PHD and last I heard was being fast tracked to get her Dept head/mentors faculty position. If that happens they plan to buy a home and I’ll just have to get it all up there. (May take two trips cause I got carried away buying speakers-3 pair ADS speakers-two 911’s and one top line ADS towers AND one pair AR9 (?) towers. The AR towers were 700$-the guy had lost his job and was desperate for cash. I felt awful taking them…he had refoamed them all and repaired/replaced all the crossover transistors etc.
I’ll probably get the AR’s up north first cause they have foam surrounds and not liking to be in storage. The ADS speakers on the other hand are kind of unique in that the drivers mids tweeters etc have butyl rubber surrounds-they rarely break down. But if those do go bad you’re kind of screwed because the company is no more and there’s like one reputable person I’ve found with spare parts…
I did join NORML way back in the very beginning. I also have a hand signed letter from my congressman (now deceased) in response to my request that he support decriminalization (1975-76) I used to tape that inside my wall locker at each duty station.
I worked on KC130 aircraft electrical systems in the Marine Corps air wing but never really could believe I was good at that. Looking back is always tempting for me as you can tell by now but I’m working really hard to change that.
I have all the High Times (except number one!!! ) for the first 2-3 years somewhere. An old “friend” has/had(?) issue 1 and not many more but refused to even sell it to me…I think I have the book “Sinsemilla” also which was kind of revolutionary back then. I loved growing it more than smoking it honestly.
I got sober many years ago but then got married and had a couple of terrific kids and you know how that goes. They are my real “plants” I guess; I tell them they are like Voyager I and II for me.
So I got out of the service and got my AA in liberal arts but never could choose a major. Was pumping gas weekends turned into a full time managers position but that company was ____ed so I just quit. Went to work pounding nails and carpentry for a while and saw a local ad for the Postal exam. I studied hard for that, did real well on the test and got hired like within days. 35 years later after delivering the same route for 34 of them I decided to retire.
My mother in law passed unexpectedly in February 2017 and my wife is an only child so she inherited this cute old ranch on a river nearby and I suggested we sell our place and pay off the mortgages and move over there.
She agreed but as Oscar Wilde said “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
So I’m getting pretty desperate here in spite of myself. I need to find something to do for ME in between doing for everybody else. My goal this year is to finish fixing up what I can on the house and barn and hopefully empty out the storage unit and save myself some income in the process.
I really cannot convey how helpful your simple email has been; therapeutically and practically. It looks like the Phototron is likely a very heavy and bulky paper weight but that’s ok because as you stated, things have changed.
I’ll probably have to at least go through the thing and check all the electrical circuits. I’d bought 2 u shaped extra bulbs and found those carefully packed as well. The only real issue is the decay/flaking of the reflective material on the interior of the side panels. I’m sure there’s a way to replace it, but given the limited usefulness of the unit itself I’ll probably just start reeducating myself as you have been doing.
I’m sorry for the rant.
Thank you so much for your email and I’ll look forward to reading more on the website
Glam
“You can’t take the effect and make it the cause”
Jack White
“I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
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i have been trying to find a specific manual for the phototron. i have seen four of them online but none are the one that i had when i bought mine. does your manual have a hand drawn picture of where to cut the leaf to force a branch out the other side? i am looking for that one.
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I took pictures of what I’m pretty sure was the original
This is page 1
Page 19 Special note mentions lateral shoot cutting called pruning.
Is that the one you want?
Those are labeled steps 22, 23, 24, 25
I wanted you to have some idea of what I have as opposed to just emailing pics you may not need/want
It’s about 4 photos total. Just let me know what size you’d prefer them so I can maybe send them one at a time so as not to overwhelm my tiny Comcast email server.
“You can’t take the effect and make it the cause”
Jack White
“I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
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i’m sorry but that is not the one i want. i don’t really need the manual, i just wanted to have the information posted on here. the manual i had talked about all plants having the ability to be female and that temp and humidity caused them to be male. we were made to keep the temp at around 90 degrees so i had my phototron in an old cardboard refrigerator box. there was a lot of general marijuana knowledge and explanations on how marijuana works in it that i thought would be good to have posted.
Okay, now I have some specific key words to look for; I have all the manuals etc from 1991-1992. Your first question was about pruning or pinching and the hand drawn illustrations which I do have. I apologize for not staying on topic on this forum and appreciate not being flamed for that.
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From the frequently asked questions
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yea, this is not the manual that i’m looking for. i think mine was about 83 to 86, somewhere in that era.
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Ok. The pruning technique, lateral shoots, node length, and hand drawn illustrations are the only reason I posted this. I think he emphasized determining sex after changing the light cycle and IF you had proper temperature and nutrient levels you’d likely have all females. He states if they showed males initially, you could go back to 24 hours or 18/6 daylight and revert them back to vegetative state and after 45 days try again. My reading of this was he believed you could get all females by maintaining proper nutrition and temperature. Just my take on it. I never could devote the time to the pruning lol.
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the pics for trimming leave to spawn the opposite branch was even more rudimentary than the pics in your manual. they looked like something that i would draw and i still draw stick figures when i’m drawing a person. he basically said that any “regular” seed is female if you keep temp @90 F and kept humidity good and did not stress the plant. it took me 3 minutes a day to trim the skunk (indica based plant), i spent 4 or 5 hours a day trimming that damn hawaiian (sativa based) plant lol it was brutal. but what was great on my manual is that he went to great lengths explaining how the marijuana plant grows. that was why i was looking for someone who had a copy of it, as i said before, he did his doctoral thesis on the marijuana plant.
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Every reply sharpens my understanding. When you mentioned what you thought was the year of your experience, that really helped. I have a brochure for the Phototron III so I was definitely much later to the party than you.
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