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Same as my other diary I used the soak for 24h and into the root root method. Going really well so far but are small.
The OG Kush autos have the air stones in and the blueberry don’t. I wish I’d done a plant of each cultivar with and without air stones but I basically forgot to use them for the first two plants! Doh!
Bit of an odd one but i guess its a question, its just not a problematic question for once! Does anyone here use those wifi cameras that tilt and pan to bang in their grow room to be able to keep an eye on it whilst they are away? I have wifi temp/humid controllers but want to c!
Yeah man, like i said on your other diary, i do use the cameras, i'm mostly using them to make a timelapse and to take hourly and daily pics of some individual plants and the whole grow rooms. it's great and makes it simple, you're doing the right thing growmie, stay hard! hope this helps ! 🚀
These ladies have just literally been fimmed. They seem to be fine which is good I have had a shift about of lights as well. Go to the blueberry diary as I literally just updated it lol
All is going pretty well. These OG’s look really indica which is good. Definitely looks like what I was after.
I am aware I need to start LST’ing these OG plants. I am planning to do it later today when I am back from an appointment.
The growth node where I fimmed them is a little weird looking where I have pinched the very edges of the leaves.
Seems to be going ok at the mo, I just need to make sure air is getting all around the plants and there are no microclimates.
Starting to get much bigger now. Iv got all excited as Mars hydro contacted me about maybe doing some promo work for them which is absolute music to my ears as long as they message me back again. 🤞
So earlier today, just after I snapped these photos I started tying down these two plants, drilling holes around the edges of my auto pots.
I must say, so far, I absolutely love these auto pots. They make things SO easy. I would not mind using a super soil extract mixed in with my coco and then just use plain water. That is the goal but to be honest I have SO MANY NUTES that iv paid for out of my own money so it’s going to be a while before that happens lol
I do have photos of them since I LST’d but I havnt loaded them from my slr to Mac and stuff yet. Tuesday I aim to do that.
I also have a timelapse of me putting together my Mars Hydro Fce 3000 but havnt made the music yet. Getting there though. Same deal with the devil press video, although it is in the process of being made but I need to get to my next harvest rele as I don’t have much bud to squish at the mo!
Just added a few over exposed photos - sorry about that! They look pretty straggley here because i had literally just LST'd them and cut a few lower leaves etc. They ave most likely recovered now tho to be honest, i cant reallly tell from my wifi cam but will look tomorrow when im home.
Update - Went in today and there were a few creepy crawly things but just on one pot with a really wilted plant in it - no idea wot the hell happened with that one but hey ho, it doesnt look like they have stayed around anywhere else but I guess we will see. I did a beneficial microbe wattering to boost immunity as well as spraying some essential oils so we will see I guess. All the plants look healthy as tho so yeah. I mean judge for yourself - if there is something visibly wrong do tell me! (edit) oh and I dont actually even mean the first few pictures! I just noticed them all droopy and pale looking but actually it was just after lights had come on and the yellowing on them is actually from a shit camera. They look healthy now I used my slr
Just like the blueberry the OG Kush has started chucking out pistols now. All looking great now. They really benefited from the slight tidy up and lollipoppijg I did the other day. I must have anticipated them flowering because as soon as I did that they started which Is great. I aim to chop days before Xmas so hopefully I’m on shedule coz otherwise I will run out of bud!
The week has been pretty good. Have been a little distracted playing drums to be honest but things seem to be going ok. I could probably add a little more nutrients as they seem to be quite light green at the moment. There are white marks on some of the photos where I spilled some of the reservoir water with salt based nutrition added. Running an EC of around 1.5-1.8 atm, im actually quite surprised at how hungry these ladies are.
I figured they wuld be more like the older autoflowers that were really sensitive to nutrition and stuff but theyve obviously kept working their original lines as well as the new ones.
As you can see they are starting to shoot out pistols now, im really looking forward to them starting to smell. Not sure iv actually ever had OG Kush. it seems like the sort of strain I probvably should have tried and maybe did when I was just buying 'weed' from the street but we will see.
All I really did this week was do a little lollipopping on the ones I can actually reach and a few tucks here and there of the main colas to try and get them a bit more even.
Oh yeh, iv also been doing weekly feeds of ecothrive biosys once a week and of course I added ecothrive charge into the coco when planting. When I do my microbve feed I get some luke warm water into a jar, add the microbes, add a few tea spoons of mollasses (1tsp/L of water) and I make sure there is some air space left at the top of the jar.
screw the lid pon and shake it vigorously for a few seconds then put it down and come back every few hours or whgen I remember or when im in the kitchen, open it up and shake. I do this for about 24h and it gets all foamy on top when I shake and I notice the bubbles hang around for a lot longer after a few hours than right at the beginning. I then bang this in the appropriate amount of water and water it in after having turned the taps on the autopot res off for 24-48 hours. They seem to love it everytime
These guys are coming along nicely. They needed slightly less defoliation or lolipopping than the blueberry purely because they are closer the door of the tent so I can reach them easier. Iv been in a couple of times with scissors to them now.
Dont know what to say really as I just updated the blueberry diary as well. They are coming along nicely. The OG plants seem to be smelling slightly more than the blueberry atm but they are really just at the stage of starting to show some trich's som the smell will follow in the next couple weeks. I did notice a slight hint of citrus off of these at the ko but I could be wrong as it develops, I dont really remember having tried og but im sure iv tried descendents of it.
Ok that will do now! Speak to y'all soon!
EDIT: I took some macro shots. This is actually how I check my trichs usually tbh. I take them at the most zoomed in these are and then also zoom in on the pc as well. I just noticed after uploading them they are actually quite dark, whoops!
EDIT:
Will do an update in a bit. These plants in particular are starting to get suuuper frosty now and both are starting to smell fantastic! I’m actually really happy with the RAM exhaust fan, ducting and filter. I think this is the least smelly grow so far tbh. (Touch wood it stays like that).
I will do some more macro photos later because I’m pretty sure these are the frostiest buds I have grown so far, it’s certainly the most light I have used so far! Especially with the price rises I’m noticing this! Oh well, the cannabis will be worth it.
I said to my chat friends, it’s in my diary to harvest the week after next but I’ll be absolutely flabbergasted if they actually finish by then.
Also the PH was WAAY off so I fixed it. One thing I am noticing is the precipitate that is forming and falling out when I mix my res. I then go to change it and there is loads of precipitate crystals at the bottom of the res and my plants look hungry.
Honestly, I think I’m going to switch them to GHE for the last couple weeks. At least I know what I’m doing with the GHE. I have tried what I can with the hydrosol and it just continues to give me issues so I think I am hanging up my hat, at least for this week.
I’ll mix up a res in a bit and use the GHE, if that helps to stop them yellowing up, if not then I know it’s not the fact the nutrients are precipitating out and not actually being delivered to the plant. I dunno we will see.
It may be the way in which I am adding my silica to the mix. I have heard that can be an issue with ionic salts and silica but I have been diluting it first, at least I thought I was. I dunno, I’ll have a play around in a sec…
Ok so my OG Ladies are looking pretty lime green/yellow.
I noticed when I mixed my nutes I think I mixed up the a and b bottles I also don’t really check PH, relying on microbes to buffer. I checked it and it’s high. Iv fixed the res mix and upped the dose. It’s been 24h ish…
Do my plants know when they are about to go to sleep? I get that the RH rises at night. This is thing, iv noticed it spikes 15 mins before the lights go out. Is this when they have reached their VPD or do they just know it’s about to get dark?
Plants will learn when it is time to sleep, they get used to the lighting schedule. The only issue I can really see is she needs a little Nitrogen as her leaves are looking a little pale. Otherwise, she is looking awesome. I hope this helps, good luck
Things are goigng ok I guess. I cant seem to shake this yellowing...I only changed the res to GHE nutes yesterday - looking at it they havnt precipitated out of solution like the hydrosol did. We will see if its done the job. Oh I corrected the PH down to 5.5 ish aswell. It should help but I dunno - not long left now so we will see. Will probably start knocking down the nutes at the end of next week. I dunno ill refer to my last diaries and see when I started flushing them as it seemed to work pretty well.
The photos - well there were a lot of crap ones and a couple of good ones so I uploaded the ones I wasn't completely ashamed of!
The afghans and smoothie plants are starting to stretch now, ill update them tomorrow or something...
I am loving having a larger grow space. If you are reading this growing in a tent that is half the size of your actual space. Just buy a tent that fits the room properly…SO MUCH BETTER!
Things are going ok-ish. I have either fungus gnats or roots aphids. Honestly I can’t remember which one, I get really confused between them. I have put down sticky traps and made a few vinegar traps which have been working to a degree. Iv also been using essential oil sprays to try and make it less habitable. To be honest I am going to halt germinating more seeds, try to finish these ones. Definitely will finish all the ones that are full into flower and will try to finish the later ones I planted (the Afghans and smoothie) if they are well enough to do so.
Once they have been harvested (the ones finishing in a week or two) I will re-assess and see if I can finish the afghans and smoothies. If they are well enough I will flower them, if not I won’t.
Once it’s empty I will obviously take EVERYTHING out and spray and wipe with bleach.
I plan to get rid of the soils/coco that is in there now and replace it with new coco. I don’t think re-using my old coco went very well and am pretty certain that is a huge contributing factor of why I have the bugs. I didn’t really think through the fact that if there were any roots leftover in the media they would go rotten and be excellent food for them! Doh!
Oh well, it’s all good. Well it’s not but it will be! Lol
On the plus side the girls are looking stupidly beautiful and the trichs are really growing beautifully now. I definitely think these are the Frostiest plants I have grown to date. It probably helps to have an appropriate amount of light in there this time!
I would say to anyone umming and arring of whether to buy more light for their space That it’s definitely worth investing in. It took me a long time to build up my lights to a stage where I actually want them.
I was thinking of the really early days of me growing. I was using CFL bulbs as I was scared that if I used a HID light the swat team would bust through my windows while abseiling down the outsid rod my building! Lol ok maybe not quite that bad but I was properly scared of being detected by a heat seeking helicopter!
Luckily that really only applies when you are doing big whole room or whole floor of a house grows. Also I don’t really know where all that stands now we have LED light fixtures. I dunno but I do know LEDS were the answer to my worries!
I remember when I went from a CFL bulb (200w) to the same wattage but in COB LEDS. I was absolutely AMAZED at the intensity of these little cheap lights.
I literally bought the COB chips themselves and soldered them together with various heat sinks and stuff. It looked like proper bodge job BUT it did the trick.
The autoflower I grew under a CFL literally didn’t produce any thrichomes at all. I turned it all into butter after smoking and it doing nothing. The butter also did nothing…I then harvested my second plants and was absolutely amazed that I grew like half an ounce of weed at home. Especially because the first plant I grew didn’t create thrichomes. I just assumed it was like trying to grow a coca plant at home where it will sort of grow but not create the right alkaloids.
I love it but yer it’s just interesting to think back!
I switched to the GHE flora nutes because the hydrosol kept separating and precipitating out of solution. Pretty sure it was the silicon I was adding but I didn’t really have time to wait and see if it corrected in the next batch because of the short flowering time of autos. Actually thinking about it even photos are on a stop watch one it starts flowering so yeh I just didn’t have time to wait and see due it being in flower.
I do have more photos to add but they are still on my computer from my SLR and I havnt been on there yet. I been trying to find a way of focus stacking in post without having to spend money on photoshop. Yes I am a cheapskate!
Update: iv figured out it is very hard to do focus stacking well with open source software. Pretty sure I’m gonna have to pay for photoshop which is annoying to me. I miss the days when EVERY piece of software was available to torrent! Iv just had to buy some VST drum software for my drum kit which I’m sure I’d have been able to pirate a few years ago! Oh well, I guess it’s swings and roundabouts because the software has also got WAAAAY better. Anyway I chucked up some more photos just ones I had taken on my phone.
Will probably go back in later or tomorrow to do more close ups.
I went in today and realised I had left the lights dimmed over night aswell which is annoying. I need to stop doing that but every time I open my tent I’m worried that it’s going to shine abnormally brightly through my curtains or blinds or something. I dunno, I get paranoid I guess.
I have taken the bigger OG plant out of the AutoPot tray, rested a standard plant pot tray on top of the AutoPot tray and then put the plant on that. I started feeding it water only yesterday (a bit late if I am going to flush for a week bu ur n it’s all good) I tend to start flushing when the pistols are like 75% or so turned amber. It’s strain dependant obviously but to be honest I’m not sure I see the point in flushing anyway. No other agricultural crop does it. I don’t burn my bud, I vape it but I do smoke one joint of each variety I grow just to make sure it doesn’t black ash and go all nasty to actually smoke. I have never had a problem. I’m pretty convinced that flushing doesn’t actually do anything other than force the plant to start metabolising itself. It’s not like the plant sucks up the actual nutrients like nitrogen phosphorus and stuff and deposit it into the bud. It doesn’t work like that. Just like us, plants metabolise and break down their food.
I dunno, I know a lot of people will scream at me but I just don’t see the point.
Also when I talk of ‘flushing’ I’m referring to just switching to water only. I’m not referring to the same intensity flush you would do if you had nutrient lockout. I’m NOT hammering it with water to the point of shit loads of run off. Just enough to start runoff.
I did notice the roots when I moved the pot onto of the AutoPot tray. They are craaaazy long and trailing like a tail out of the bottom holes of the pot. I have never had roots grow like that before.
In actual fact, I am incredibly impressed with the AutoPot system. It’s not something that would scale up well, in terms of cost because they just don’t discount multiple units enough to make it cost effective. I’m surprised at this actually because it’s all just very expensive plastic.
Also the performance of it is fantastic and it’s so low maintenance. I am surprised they make scaling it up so expensive because I think A LOT MORE commercial operations would use it then I believe. As I said, the performance is crazy good.
It must be the AutoPot system. At first I wasn’t sure if it was that or the fact I actually planted into my final pot straight away stopping transplants but I did the same with the second batch that arnt in autopots and they are not as vigorous in terms of speed.
I’m also very impressed that the autopots are so much better than hempy buckets or any other SIP’s I have used. It’s the exact same theory behind it - the wet, dry cycle but for some reason the autopots just do it so much better. I think it must be because the plants literally get water whenever they want it there and then. So they decide when to drink rather than me telling them when to drink (and eat I suppose).
As I said before, I am slightly postponing germinating more seeds for my next photoperiod grow because I need to empty out the room and give it a deep clean, replace the grow media and make sure all the aphids or gnats are gone.
It’s odd, there seems to be a lot of them in the soil and around the lower parts of the plants but there is definitely none in any of the buds I have photographed because obviously I zoom In to trichome scale so any bug would be HUUUGE on the camera sensor.
I’m not saying they have had no effect, I’m pretty sure that’s why the two smaller plants went super yellow and a bit rusty. Pretty sure they have been stressed from bugs. I managed to get the yellow OG plant back to green but now the small blueberry one is yellow as F.
OH WELL! That is the problem with the AutoPot system to be honest. Really annoying when you want to give different strains different quantities of feed.
I think to solve this, next time I am going to mix a super soil concentrate into the grow media along with my ecothrive charge, worm castings (just a small amount). It’s also good for top dressing hungry plants so I can customise each pots feed shedule.
It will be a bit of a change to do a water only grow and I KNOW full well that it is going to take some getting used to but it will make life a lot easier not having to mix in lots of nutrition into the water. I will obviously have to get used to organically growing with essentially dry ammendments as well as pre-digested dry ammendments in order to get going straight away.
Anyway enough rambling. Tomorrow is the day I have in my diary to crop the OG plants. It has obviously been the amount of time they state on the pack of seeds - 90 days? Maybe? I dunno I’ll look…ok I just looked and it’s actually been 9 weeks. That is craaaazy quick! So 65 days. No wonder it seems to have gone so quick, it has been quick!
The big one is definitely more ‘ripe’, for want of a better word, than the smaller one. I’m pretty sure where it’s been closer to the light it has finished quicker. I wanted to move the light closer to them but then it would have missed some of the taller cola's.
does anyone know why they are called cola's? is it anything to do with thr shape of coke cans? or do other plants also grow cola's? iv grown my fair share of plants and havr never come accross another plant where people refer to the apical myrestem's as cola's. dunno, just a weird thought…but a thought none the less!
something else which is interesting…i grew four plants initially. I added air-stones at the bottom of two of the four pots and i had two huuuge plants and two wee diddy plants. Annoyingly, i wish i could say that the two with the stones were the huge ones but no. It doesnt appear as if they really made that much of a difference. one of the big plants had an airstone and one didn't.
HOWEVER, im not 100% i uses them properly because i literally just chucked the airdomes at the bottom, plugged them in and started chucking coco on top. It has been made apparent to me that i should have covered them in the clay balls i was going to put on top to stop algae growing (i ended up re-using the cotswald stone chips i used at the bottom of my hempy buckets).
This time i am going to purchace some clay hydroten balls aswell as my coco so i can use them at the bottom as well as the top)
There is ALWAYS shit to improve on - for example, i dont plan on getting bugs next time eithrr!
Ok so I ended up letting the smaller OG go on longer coz it was further away from the light and couldn’t be moved closer. Probably with a big of small to large organisation I probably would have been alright so next time I will do the half tent split down the middle of where the lights meet rather than down the middle length ways. It will take a little shuffling at the end of veg but that’s ok.
There is something about either Fastbuds genetics or the LED lights we more or less all use these days but there is something incredibly colourful in all of the grows I do of their genes. They all at the very least start going purple/black/blue/yellow(not one I enjoy!) / orange. Shit I think I have seen the whole colour wheel in my plants so far - tertiary and all!
Anyway, I have now actually harvested the bigger OG plant. I will post the update later with some pictures but I havnt got round to the macro shots yet, only for thrichomes checks but nothing postable.
I will also do the wet weigh in a bit when iv tidied a space big enough in my kitchen!
Will do an update later. All is going well. Does anyone else get weirdly shaped leaves after doing a FIM? I usually punch it with my fingers and a few times the new growth afterwards looks a little deformed and almost as if it’s been bitten off.
It took me a while but after scouting with a loupe for aaaaages I realised that when I pinched the very growth tip off I think it also clipped the very tips of the tiiiiny leaves that are growing out the very end of the small node before it’s exapanded outwards. I was really scared I had critters but I did it myself! Duh
@Rabidreject I would recommend not adding anything in with the Hydrocrop nutrients; no supplements or additives of any kind. Unlike a lot of brands, they really are a complete feed …They provide everything plants need so it’s not necessary to put in anything extra. And they are designed to work with either inert media or hydro (i.e. where there are no other nutrients present), so anything else you add just runs the risk of upsetting the balance. They are also very stable, so it’s either something you’re adding (probably the silicone) or not watching the pH that’s causing the precipitation.
I know Hydrocrop’s nutrients are not big on the cannabis scene, but loads of tomato growers use them, and cannabis has similar nutrient requirements to tomatoes. Coco coir, perlite and the nutients are ALL you need. Easy, effective and cheap …Just ensure the pH stays within the 5.5 - 6.4 range. As I said before, the nutrients are buffered to stabilise the pH so it should hold pretty steady once you’ve set it.
Ah those cannabis specific nutrient companies, with all their not-so-optional extras …It’s a clever business model isn’t it?!
Putting the Hydrocrop nutrients in pH 7 water and not adjusting it down afterward will cause some precipitation. If you do try using them again, you need to mix the feed to whatever EC you want, then add pH down - I use phosphoric acid - until the pH is around 6. You shouldn't need much pH down because the nutrients themselves are fairly acidic. I’m sure that will resolve the issue (unless there is something strange in your tap water!).
The only time I have had any problem with precipitation is when I completely forgot to adjust the pH after mixing the feed. It worried me until I realised what I had done. I threw the feed out, made a new batch, adjusted the pH, and everything was fine thereafter.
@Faroutman,yeah funnily enough I had come to pretty much the same conclusion just by looking at the packet. I’m so used to getting done by cannabis nutrient companies that it just seemed too good to be true!
Yeah I think it’s a PH thing. My ph out my tap is high like a 7 or 7.5 so just because I do not time with these autos to change the res and wait to see if my change has worked. I will probably try these again but with literally just the hydrocrop. I dunno, tbh it’s not really my style and doesn’t really work with my ‘lifestyle’. I’m probably going to go with an organic dry amendment type thing from ecothrive. That way I can just mix with my media and top dress once a week after veg and add water only to my res. That would be a lot simpler for me.
Tbh this is the second time I have tried these hydrosol nutes and I do remember getting precipitate with them before as well. No idea why as I wasn’t adding anything at all other than the hydrosol when I used it last time in my hempy buckets. I must admit i am not a huge fan but each to their own. I dunno why but it just won’t stay in solution for me. Very odd
I do believe it was my PH that was a little too high and/or lack of cal/mag, more specifically cal.
My PH way crazy high coming out a turquoise green colour which is upwards of 7! I lowered it down to a yellow green which is 5.5-6. I also raised my EC slightly. So take your pick, it was one of them! Lol I probably should have done one at a time so if it happened again I would know specifically. Pretty sure it was the ph tho coz I’m da Italy certain hydrosol has enough cal/mag built in. Meh all is good now
Still going really nicely. Will do another update this evening. Not that it looks like my last update has even gone through. Very odd and annoying but hey ho. These girls are getting massive now. Every time I think they have finished stretching I go in the room and they’ve crept upwards again!
These autopots are crazy efficient and the girls just love them. I was really worried that they would be too small for the root mass but now iv grown with them they are actually great. I think any bigger would just be too big of a plant for my tent to be honest. They are already creeping way over to the smaller Afghan side. I don’t think I’ll be able to reuse any of the media I put in the autopots autos tho. The root mass is just going to be way too compacted for me to be bothered to go through it all. It’s interesting that I have two blueberry plants without an air stone at the bottom and two OG’s with the air stone. I’m not sure I used it correctly to be honest. I think I was meant to lay some sort of wicking material around it like perlite or clay balls but I didn’t have anything so just filled straight with coco.
Anyway I have one bigger plant out of each strain so it doesn’t look like the stone has made a huge difference. I have one big og and one smaller and same with the blueberry. Pretty interesting. Probably going to play around with some plastic sip bucket inserts linked up to some sort of timer/pump or something to refill the hempies every few days. Probably will just use my drip system for it. I dunno I’m off to get my back clicked now. Will update when im home
Rabidreject
