HI Mark,

I'm an old man — a retired electrical/refrigeration engineer, and, as my monicker suggests, have been living here in the campo in Andalucia southern Spain just outside Coín for the past 10 years.   I'm pretty much a loner and have paid scant attention to the Weed Portal for a variety of reasons - especially in the last 3 or 4years, I spend a lot of time just listening to music, reading, writing, and tending and smoking my plants.

I've smoked rope on and off for 50 years or so and am very happy that, for me - the trio of weed, beer, and music - is something I can nowadays enjoy whenever I like.

When I recently dipped into looking at weed portal again after failing to comprehend it a couple of years back, I saw your name as a potential pal and just been looking at your posts.

I grow outdoors in pots on my balcony - usually up to about a dozen plants per year and up till this year I've been able to grow, dry, and cure enough for my (sometimes heavy) use. I smoke doobies of neat weed mainly because I gave up tobacco many years ago. I've tried several different (non-psychactive plants as a dilutant because I get pretty wrecked quite often - but a couple of years ago I reverted to the plant on its own. Generally, when the plant is approaching maturity, I strip off some of the fan leaves and set them to dry. I do the same with all the other leaves (except the sugar leaves) just before harvesting.

I do this, thinking that although fan leaves don't have much active stuff, that ought to make them useful as a dilutant for potent buds. It works to a degree but generally not enough and (perhaps because I'm a bit of a pig) there never seems to be enough fan leaves to match the flowers.

This year I've had some abysmal failures with seeds for no good reason (that I can see) I really don't think it was due to starting too early, or to soil contaminants etc. Following detailed complaints with pics Nirvana have sent me free replacements twice for failed autofem bubbleicious. (Nice to know they don't abandon their customers) but even so, out of 10 of that strain only one has survived (now at 500mm) - I won't be buying that breed again. Other strains (all Autos) failed as seedlings - (mainly damping off) I have plenty of bag seeds donated via a couple of friends but had very little success germinating them.

It's only in the l as t two weeks that the tide seems to have turned and I've currently got 4 seedlings and 3 more just showing which look as if they might make it. These last few have been in Jiffy pellets which I've been dubious about up to now.

I'm willing to consider that in my eagerness to get things started perhaps I set things going earlier than I should have (early April) but I really don't think that's so as I watch the daytime temps carefully and take seedlings and young plants indoors at night.

Anyway I don't really know why I'm rambling on here - just thinking out loud I guess.

We're currently into the hot weather now 32° at 16:00 so what I have on the go now should all survive OK and I'll probably set a few more to germ in the next few days as insurance that I'll have enough for my needs.

Sorry to ramble on. Hope all's going well for you.

Best regards

Tony.