Hello everyone, Here is my first grow journal on here. I purchased the Bruce Banner Auto 10+10 deal through ILGM in mid January. The seeds arrived on the 28th of January. 5 of them were germinated in a cup of water w/ a drop of super thrive and hydrogen peroxide that night. Unfortunately that batch of seed wound up being old. The first try all showed a tail then stopped growing after they were placed in soil, same with the second, third and fourth tries. So, I contacted ILGM for replacement seeds and they said they would happily replace the order or give me 30 free seeds if I wanted to place another order. I decided I wanted to get more of a variety so I opted for the free seeds. This time I got the Bruce Banner seeds replaced, and added the Banana Kush Auto 10+10 deal, as well as 10 GDP autos. This order took a little longer to be filled and arrived on March 15th. 2 seeds of each strain were germinated that night in the same exact fashion as before. Roughly 48 hrs later on the 17th, both of the Banana Kush seeds showed a tail but not quite enough to plant. The following day the rest of the seed had shown a tail as well. At that point the BK seeds had roughly a 1/4” tail and were placed in a clear solo cup w/ coco loco medium and a colored solo cup over top of the clear cup. The day after that on the 19th of March the rest of the seeds showed 1/4” tail and were planted in the same fashion. This grow will be done with organic “Kind” soil as feeder medium. Unfortunately the “Kind” is taking it time getting here and I am crossing my fingers it will be here soon so the girls won’t have to go without proper nutrition. Now, going backwards little bit I had one the oddest things happen with one of first round of Bruce Banner I had. After I had contacted ILGM about getting the seeds replaced I had one seed sprout after more than 2 weeks of being sown. I had left them under the light and kept them moist in hopes there was still viable growth and 1 actually sprouted. She is growing well and I will be posting pics of her shortly as she is tru
I’ve been fortunate. ALl but 2 seeds from ILGM have germinated for me so far.
The 2 that didn’t were due to letting the water evaporate being to close to my cable box
for warmth.
I think auto’s are more temperamental and aren’t as robust as photo seeds.
Sorry I pushed the send button a little early and the page won’t let me edit or add to the post yet. But here’s the rest… She is growing well and I will be posting pics of her shortly as she is truly a miracle in my opinion. After the rest of her siblings did nothing I dug up the seeds and they were all empty shells with no sprout. Seems crazy that one some how made it after that long.
I was starting to think the same thing. However, thankfully this batch of seed appears to be much better.
I figure if the seeds split and a tail shows it germinated, if I can’t get it beyond that point it’s my fault.
I’ve got much the same feeling on it, but all environmental factors were kept optimal for continued germination. That’s why I dug some of the seed up after over a week. I wanted to see what went wrong and it was apparent the germ had stopped growing and died which is typical for old non viable seed.
I’m sorry if I came off sounding a little harsh, but the seeds germinated and you did the same thing 4 times in a row and got the same result every time. You need to examine your procedure and change the way you get the seeds beyond the germination stage.
First off, there is no one right way to succeed, most every grower on this forum has developed their own method. What works for one person may not work for another. I don’t know why that is, maybe the amount of hovering and futzing each person does.
Getting the seeds to germinate is difficult for some but apparently you have that down getting a 100% germination rate. You need to change what happens next.
There is a problem with the growing medium or your watering or the controlling of the humidity or you are planting them too deep. You need to examine what you are doing and change it up.
If you want help in figuring out what is going wrong just ask and you’ll get several suggestions with some consensus among the answers. Take what is suggested and adapt it to your style but don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Just do 1-2 seeds at a time until you succeed, then go nuts.
Fox Farms Coco Loco is a coco product with other things added but it needs to be treated like a coco product when it comes to watering and feeding.
It is very difficult to overwater when using a coco based product, in fact coco needs to be wet and remain wet. If you treated it like a Fox Farms Ocean Forest or Happy Frog soil and watered just a little to keep the roots from dampening off and dying, then the seedlings probably dried out and died. Just the opposite.
Coco needs to be watered daily and watered aggressively. Coco has no nutrients in it and needs feeding as soon as the seedling forms the first set of leaves. When you begin feeding it (I know you never got that far) you need to feed it daily and your feeding should include cal-mag. It also needs to be watered to runoff to keep the salts from building up.
I don’t know if this was your problem or not, but it is the type of issue that can come up to keep you from being successful. You need to explore what you are doing and change it up if it doesn’t work for you.
I’ve tried sprouting in peat cubes, and root riots, and rock wool, and soil and coco and by far have been most successful in soil with a seed starter on top. I’ve had lots of failures which is why I’ve tried lots of different methods.
each seed is a roll of the genetic dice. most will sprout n grow well. a few exceed average. and…some shoot a 1/8" tap root out and that’s it. it just happens. if the same seed batch gave bad results…yeah, that happens too. is why so good IGLM makes good on bad seeds.
now it new seeds duplicate previous failures …something you can control needs to be adjusted. Good luck
Thanks for your suggestions. I appreciate your apology and I feel as though I need to explain a little further to clarify as I may have come off as completely inexperienced. I started growing over 23 years ago and have germinated many, many, of seeds through out the years. I’ve obtained a pretty good eye for viable and non viable seed and their behaviors because Ive seen it over and over again. In my experience, old seed that has overly hardened, or begun to die will show a tail after soaking and or split but the germ fails to grow. The germ will protrude the shell but never actually form into a seedling it just dies. (I.e. when you germinate seeds in a cup for long periods and some seeds have a germ that fail to advance, you have non viable seed).At least thats what I’ve noticed. Everyone obviously has their own experiences and I’m forever on a learning curve as a never ending student. Especially with the autos as I’ve only grown a few throughout the years and they seem to be temperamental. This particular time around, a thermostat controlling a heating pad in an incubation chamber I created years ago malfunctioned. So I assumed the temperature inside of the chamber reached below zero. The outside temps were well below freezing at the time and my grow space is in an unheated space. So I started over. After that batch did the same thing, I began to suspect something else was going on and began reassessing my procedures. During that time I started reading up more on the auto strain here in the forum and discovered other growers experienced the very same circumstances with the Bruce Banner strain. At that time I wrote ILGM support about my concerns of old seed. They assured me all seed that didn’t sprout would be replaced and suggested I not use the miracle grow seed starting medium I’ve used for years and switch to coco loco for the rest of the seeds. At that time I used their suggestion and changed, as I’m always up for trying something different. Unfortunately I experienced the same outcome with the coco loco except for the one that sprouted two weeks later. I’ve never had that happen after so long, in a controlled grow room where to conditions were kept optimal. Only outside with bag seed that was planted during cold soil conditions. So I’m a little puzzled, albeit super thankful for that part.
I could not agree more tanlover442. Thanks for the input! 
Here are some pics of the older Bruce Banner plant that came in the batch of seed that didn’t take. Like I said b4 she took over 2 weeks to sprout after 72hrs of water germination. but seems happy, healthy, and thriving now. I also came home last night to 2 Banana Kush and 2 Bruce Banner sprouts that came in the replacement shipment. No sign of the GDP yet though unfortunately.
Hey bud I’m running GDP n banner autos at moment. Noticed the banners are alot bigger then compact. Some Close to 6ft lol after 5 ish weeks , Just a heads up on banana I had photos n phenos in and both had a tendency to grow balls. Admittedly I was struggling with the heat. Also cola rot happened towards the end of a couple of the banana autos. It’s one type I’m personally steering clear of. Lot of it was prob my doing but it was the only type out of heaps that had the major issues. Good luck with it all. I’ll keep an eye on your progress
@Ozghost Holy shit bud! 6ft autos after 5 weeks! That’s crazy. You feeding them growth hormone, lol? Thanks for the heads up.
Lol I’ll try get a pic later on. Giving them all sorts of shit. My last crop I pgr and never again. Gave them uturn to start with to stop the stretch without realising the stretch is needed on Auto’s. This time round I’ve let them stretch and stretch they did. Feeding house n garden base neuts. Big bud from advanced. Smashed them with some weird rooting acceleration powder. Carbo load from advanced. Cal mag. All rounder from hydrobotanics grew up with the botanics and only just found it again. Love the stuff. Haven’t bothered training them because I’m out of room. Got zkittles, JH , Blue dream. Gelato following up to stagger a harvest in after them all. Best of luck.
That’s the nearly 6ft ones up back. The main crop is bit over 50 days old now. The few smaller ones at front are the staggered zkittles. Couple weeks younger
Holy fuck! Nice work @Ozghost. I like the old school verticle light set up too. I had identical shades years ago. Made the mistake of letting a “friend” borrow them and never saw them again. Happy Growing Brother! 
