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Alright boys and girls:)
Big Text ahead:)
short version: Comparison Grow with hydro instead of soil and Selected phenotypes.
long version:
It was a long, long time ago....
some grow mistakes have been made in between... it took some time to restart, as I was absent some time and had some problems with my mothers, which set me back quite a bit.
I remember back in the day like 10 years ago I once had a similar fight with spidermites, which resulted in dying mothers....ugly.. I decided to start with new seeds back then. that one time it was too much pyrethrine that gave them the rest.
This time I tried new untested soil, which was a mistake, it did the exact opposite of what the plants needed...
my spider mite treatment with way too much iso alcohol and too much light afterwards (and also pyrethrine at some point, resulted in all clones almost dying and drying...
then after some weeks the green finally slowly came back, they seemed to recover, and I pruned off some dead leaves, waited for a bit and after this I decided it is time for a nice re-potting aka soft root pruning to get rid of most of the old soil, and get some fresh soil to them roots.
to kickstart everything.. never had a problem with a treatment like that, but since they all had spider mite damage, iso/light burn damage, the re pot into that garbage fungus gnats infected , cement like soil caused the death of NL and PGK.. the one dead PGK was a keeper, but she died unfortunately.
after a week and 2 plants completle rotting away, roots getting eaten by gnats ( I got traps for them , still infestend soil..), so I decided I have to get the remaining clones free of this junk soil, and washed away that shit with the shower head, I tried to keep as many roots undamaged as I could, I washed almost all of the soil away down to the cocos rooting block .
never again buying soil that is not 95% peat based... the other stuff is just shredded garden remains and city dirt leaves, dirty shit that they sell as biological super soil, lol....made based on the amazon super soil.. some nice cement that glues your rootball to a dried stone..lol.
luckyly I had some real good soil from my garden vegetables.
still with roots...the plants have just been dying outside a few weeks ago.
and the outdoorplants also had spidermites , that is why I originally got new soil. so I cooked that old garden soil with distilled water and let it dry... that stuff was good soil, mycos, cocos, and some good quality peat soil... I remember I had calcium build up with some of my garden plants, but since it rained quite a bit, that soil was already flushed over months...
it is a nice soft soil with not much ferts left I guess.
this gave them new power...
so now I am left with the best blue dream pheno and the best critical mass pheno luckily. I had 2x BD clones, even one of those died... and the BDs all started stress induced retard- flowering I think the Criticals too, but way less.. I did some heavy prunings cause of all those dying branches that happend while I tried to get them healthy again...
I also pruned off all the funky small internode flower type growing that grew mostly on the bluedreams .
hope that did not cause herming... in the pictures you can see that whole branches died off. I cut away the dried remains on quite some of the plants dying lymbs...
they look funky due to that.
now when I remember it right, the 2nd bluedream was even more flower mode like and I think killed it myself.. kept the one that had more normal grow left and cut the funky stuff away. some branches still looked veggish.
and I still have one PGK, clone of the less prefered phenotype.. but still purple, those purple kushs all had the same yield approx.
and out of all the clones, at least this is the most robust of them all... this particular pheno looks like a plant made for hash production.. real fluffy and robust, mountain area like.
previous yield was :
BD 50g
CM50g
PGK 35g
the over all yield was 399g in a 2x4 with approx 330 watts in flower.
I guess real dry maybe 380..
I want to to a comparison like grow. and step it up quite a bit.
still 2x4, and between 300 and 400 watts LED this time, or as much as they will take... I've learned quite a bit how LED works, and more than 330W may still be too much, even in hydro for this size of a tent.
Instead of 13 plants in 6l soil , and 13 different plants, this time: 4 selected clones, which are two bluedreams, one Critical Mass, and one PGK...
so it would be 50/50 sativa/indica strains.
it would probably give me even more yield with only CC and Bluedream, since they yielded quite a bit more... but still it could be also a shading problem why some plants performed so good/badly
the 3 bluedreams of the previous grow had 5g , 10g and 50g on them, difference is crazy in yield..lol
oh and the whole top pheno jar of that bluedream was moldy, cause I am stupid., I've lost approx 120g , it was my first curing in jars.. next harvest: LDPE bags, and jars for the end-storage...
I have just a few mother pictures so far. I turned on half of my LED yesterday, along with fluoros, eacht about 70w and pretty far away.. first ferts today, since thesoil should not have much left... I re potted them about 5-7 days ago and the roots already grew through the pot, in a real nice white color.
In the last picture you can see a peek at the hydroponic system... I'll come back to that a little bit later. the final test of the RDWC still has to be made and clones still have to be cut, so if you made it all the way through that wall of chatlog with myself,
please take a seat, and lets do this :)
EDIT:
I fimmed the Critical Mass clone and the PGK for maximum branch elongation, cause I figured, I will take clones at the side branches , not the main stem... the BlueDream was not fimmed, cause I'll probably will cut the main stem for one decent clone.
aight:)
so I cut 2 blue dreams, 2 criticals, and 2 Purple Kushs on the 1st of january. and another Purple Kush, 2 days later, cause I kind of crunched the stem of one previous cut clone..
but the 2 first cut Purples rooted first, to be exact, 2 days ago. (like expected, those are true survivors, but also not so heavy yielders... all the roots you can see on the pictures are the purples. really robust plant..
pretty normal time. first roots after 5-6 days is also what I get with easy plugs.
the others also show these little nibs at the stem, so won't be long till they show roots. blue dreams 1/2 rooted, but not much yet, the criticals seem to take the longest.
I added about 3ml 3% h2o2 to the aero cloner res, 3 days ago, and today again, the water volume should be around 5-6l in the tote. today I encountered some slime on the pe-tubes too..
And I added flower nutes, only about .2 EC 3 days ago. base EC was 0.4, and cut the fluoros in half, and added 70w of LED lights... today I took off the hood from the aero cloner...
I kind of changed plans a bit, even though my rdwc volume is more fitted to 4 plants, and fitted to a 2x4 I will free up some space in my place so my area will be approx 1,4m x 1,8m, which is approx 4,6 x 6 feet, about 2.5 m², so about 3.5 times the previous grow...
I plan on doing 3 plants per 10 gallon bucket, which is a bit small, but hey.. I am not gonna change anything bucket wise, I could use the res for the additional 2 plants, but then my pump will probably clog and it would be a hassle to top up the buckets and get my ph and stuff without lifting the plants up..
I just wanted to have the same amount of CC and Bluedream, even with only 2x4, so I changed to 6 plants instead of 4. and also more than trippling the grow area, it'll be a huge field with probably 3x the previous yield... everything below 1gpw would be a fail.. but I guess thats not a problem since my previous grow yielded pretty good without selected clones.
I have a hps for this somewhere with a pretty fresh bulb, 600w, so I will use this, and my 400w LED, just can't resist that yield... I may move at some point, so this could be the last grow for a while.
hey,
I guess wer're at week 4 now..
I only cut 2 clones from the critical and 2 from the blue dreams.. should have gone with smaller net pots and do some more clones for more selection...
Well that is why it took so long,
the blue dreams really get off now.. while only being under fluoro's.. they want to grow FAST;)
but both critical mass clones took forever to root, one rooted 2 weeks ago, and is now recovering fast, the other one was rooting maybe one week ago and barely made it, also some white mold got the weakest on the stemI think...
I'll treat them with baking soda spray the next days.
for now they are still in the cloner while I prepare my room and lamp.
I want the criticals to be in the game 100% ,
currently I am in the process of upgrading my light, adding some far red leds, and 3500k lm301B's
,
I will plug the far reds on a separate timer, to switch these on one hour before lights go on and before lights off ... still have to read some stuff about it.
As I understand it, this emulates the dusk and dawn period, which signals the plants to wake up faster, way better than just blasting them with 500W , cause man,
as a human I can relate to it, it is basically the same as somebody turning your room lights on when youre almost asleep or woke or something:)
I think the emmerson effect is only due to 660nm far red, 730nm is for faster sleep and fast wake-up,
so they can use all the powerfull light from the beginning.
leaving far red on the whole day cycle would make them stretch too much.
Dr. Bruce Bugbee has some nice videos about that. basically far red signals shadow, cause far red penetrates even through dense trees, so plants like cannabis are shadow avoiding plants. and they will stretch too much if you leave far red on all day. I guess far red could also be beneficial when the stretch is over.
I should be able to give them a 13.5 hr light cycle during flower due to the far red supplement light,(like outdoor plants that flower at 14 hours.. so they should be able to suck up more light per day this way.
some stuff about my light upgrade;
I could not save my 600w HPS, so I got my hands on 200 more LM301B's, as I realized that my driver had some power left,
I figured why not use that, instead of buying another board from china, and additional driver for it.
My lamp consists of 2x 240W c2100 drivers, max voltage 115v, I got 2 boards wired in series per 240W driver, and my 2x 120W per driver boards only sucked up 190W this way, and about 2x 43V @ 2200 amp max.
this limited the max power. to 195W per driver.
so that was a limitation , I did not care though, cause with my 2x4 could only take 330W max without burning the plants...
now I will basically build a 4.5x5 at least, so I realized, why not use the extra 50W each driver can supply by using the full 115v
I got 2 more boards with 100 LEDs each, that have a voltage of about 20V each, which would result in 116V per driver, which would be about 1V over max voltage.. but I guess it will work if the driver does not overheat... lol..
tested this, and with the additionall 100 LEDs per board, each driver draws 250W from the wall...
instead of 600W hps and 380W led how I planned this grow, I now have 500W LED power, running each LED at 0.4W (which is lower than standart Kingbrites, I think they overdrive their LEDs to 0.5W or so.. every light manufacturer does this I think...
It is basically a bit more efficient than a standart samsung light, plus I have the 27W far red addon on it too.
that is the perfect light to me. consisting of 1000x lm301h, 200x lm301B, 16x epistar 600nm deep red, @ 500W, and 10x samsung 730nm chips @27W
with the longer day period, this will be equivalent to about 10% more light, per day, so it will be like a5x5 with about 550W or so:)
I plan to put the 3 purple kush's in soil, and make them get some Horizontal light to do a partial "vertical" grow within that tent. basically letting one side of the tent grow up higher than the scrog- RDWC part wich will fill 4.5x5...
I also will attach the 200 additional LEDs on a adjustable hinge, to be able to have some sideways lumen output for the purple kushs:)
I may work on a light rail too, if I can invest some more cash, but man.. $$ add up quickly.
hey,
16.02.
well I am behind schedule a bit,
right now Iam finishing my flower room, and I will probably only have 4 plants in it so far, one critical mass just did not make it, the other is weak aswell, damn I should have cut more clones...
one bluedream is excellent, another is OK, and one purple kush is just too healthy and thriving to not put her into the DWC.
so this grow will finally consist out of 2x bluedreams, one critical mass, and one Purple Kush. maybe a second purple kush in soil, just because the room has the space for it.
I treated the bubbler cloner or the clones with a h2o2, cause of some mold on the roots and neoprene, and also still workin on my DWC to get it not leaking anymore...
so I decided to do a lamp update only today:) about 1000 lm301h , 100 lm301B , 32 epistar 660s and 10 samsung 730s (26W).
as you can see, the far red is more than enough... the extra bar has the LEDs way too close.. it is an aluminium coated pcb, attached with thermal glue to a 1,5mm triple T profile and it gets hot. it is about 65°C on max wattage.
to my surprise, the far red pcbs get barely warm on max power.
more pics when I get everything running with the final DWC config, etc.
I just put them in the end-containers...
after my treatment with h2o2 (probably without any sense lol), I put them in the RDWC, 2x 40L one 40L reservoir, I cut the roots of some of them, although I think it wasn't neccesary.. I thought there may be some dead root matter tangled up , cause I had to rip some of the Ladys apart, so I cut about 1/3 off to get the dead roots out of the way basically...
and the critical mass has to make up anyway.. so I thought.. why not cut some roots off of the strong ones (lol).
to my surprise the h2o2 caused some slime on the roots... I had some problems with minor sliming in the aero cloner, and brown roots cause of temps, but after all I really think that was normal.. nothing I could not solve with a water change.. but I was also pretty lazy... had PH problems, etc....
but now, after 2 days in the RDWC, I can see new white roots growing out.. so everything should be fine from now on.
The Critical looks kinda.. well poor..
Lamp hangs over 3 feet away on minimum dim... a bout 180W or so...
it is still only waterfall , my pump (600l/h) should be stronger once I get it set up right...
Still not sure If I go with micro sprayers or just leave it at some4mm holes for the waterfall.. I think a few holes and the bubbling from the water falling through the holes into the pond, could be even better than sprayers...
I got an air pump too, but no stones Yet... IDK If I should go the safe route with air stones or keep waterfallin'...
oh and I plan on doing a timelapse once this grow is done.. including IR night footage:)
UPDATE!
put in an update:)
My res temp is right now at approx room temp (29°), hope that won't make any Problems. with LED I think that temp should be needed, so IDK if I can get it any lower realistically.
thinking about bennies... so far the roots look real nice.. 4 days since the previous pictures.
I think I treated the whole RDWC, about 100L with 1ml/L h2o2 as it was sitting around a few days waiting for the clones... then nutes added.
the roots really get going right now... and wow. I am glad I chose the Purple Kush clone.
this Plant is just the most robust thing I've ever seen In my Growing days. should be great for outdoors. (where she came from too).
I had so many PH-nutes bad soil problems, and this was the only mother, that had the most power left out of them all, not even worth comparing with the rest... also the fastest to recover.
as the other mothers barely made it with any green left, the PK really was surviving like a champ!
look at the new root growth, after just 4 days.... I cut roots off of the big PK and the big Blue dream. (only before the final RDWC setup, not planing to do this again).
even the little critical mass is starting to put out new growth... I think first real defoliation will happen in a few days or so. some old and damaged leaves have to go soon.
lamp still on lowest setting, and I got some pictures from my added timelapse cam... still setting up that thing, and finding the best position to fixate it finally. and thinking about how to fix it properly...
I had some IR LED lying around I think those were 850nm ones.. I just removed the cam-lens with a non IR filter one and boooy.. when just using one of the LEDs it is bright as fuck. I think the LED has somewhere between 2 and 3 watts .. seems like plenty of IR light for night photos... I plan on changing it to 940nm LED though.. cause I am worried about too close wavelengths at night time:)
Mud868
