So this is the Tear Down week. The timing of it makes it so i will need to the harvest flag in a few days when I can weight and test the plants.
I have included the Cleaning, and Cutting and some Root Porn.
I will make the harvest post in about 4-5 days, when I can trim these plants. There is a lot of Plant here. I got way more than I was expecting. I don't have a scale that measure this amount of plant, without taking like 10 measurements and then adding them together. So I will just be posting the dry weight. I will post the wet weight as dry weight * 1.65.
Autopots: Wow, what a great product. I have been blown away by how well and how easy it was to work with them. They really did solve the watering issues. Excellent product. If you are a beginner, start with Autopots.
-= Lessons Learnt =-
- Overdrive the air to your Autopots. In my control plant, I used a small rectangle air stone (instead of a standard air dome). This lead to root rot and some other issues, it also put significantly less air into the water. The root rot, give the material for the Brown Algae to grow. Using a huge Air-disc-Air-Stone would be an excellent combo to mix in with the air dome itself. Something like this: https://www.amazon.ca/Pawfly-Diffuser-Suction-Hydroponics-Aquarium/dp/B01MY3AQ33 at the bottom and the air-dome on top of it, will be what I do with my next experiment.
- Air stone in the reservoir. I had two instances where algae grew into the res. An air stone would have helped. It would have also helped my control plant get less root rot. Given the amount that the air-domes and air sources got engulfed, having the water have more o2 in it would have only been beneficial.
- Don't grow 6 plants in a 4x4. Since my control plant was about 1/8th the size of the others, I think I could have grown 5 in the shape of a 5 (on a 6 sided dice)⚄ This placement would give a much more spaced canopy for airflow and more importantly light. The sides of some of the plants were lighter green and produced larf due to lack of light penetration.
- This tent was on 19-5 schedule. This worked out very well for this strain. After every lights on, they were in the praying position, so this strain was able to recover in that 5hrs off. If I had more seeds, I would run these again, and try 20-4. I think this strain could handle it. All for all, I think I'm going to 19-5 as my default timing. This kept up a solid DLI.
- Staring at .9EC (really .7 EC cause my water here is .2 EC) Then bumping up at .1 a week, until 1.6EC worked out VERY well. I experimented on this crop all the way up to 1.9EC, which burnt the tips of this plant. I think if I did this strain again, I would do 1.6EC until 3-4 weeks left then crank it to 1.9. It did plump them up when I went to 1.9, however it left them looking rough. Bulk was added though.
- Sticking to 6.0PH for all of veg, and 2 weeks into flower worked great. The plant had solid and consistent color and leaf shape . The plant's did get hurt, due to some issues (as noted on the weeks). I switched to 6.5 PH in the last 3-4 weeks and it helped them recover, and plump up noticeably.
-VPD. The #1 thing I focused on was VPD. I keep it .9kpa range, as best as humanly possible. It was honestly, HUGELY noticeable compared to my other grows. I know truly understand the value of properly dialed in VPD. This is the one lesson that will stick with me forever.
- Super-cropping: On the plants I give the chiropractic treatment too, had much thicker stems as much larger channel internally. I did this treatment to 4 of the 6, and the 4 that had it done has larger buds and recovered from defoliation faster.
TLDR; VPD is king. Super-cropping is worth the time. Keeping PH and EC dialed in were all wins. Autopots kick ass.