Phuck Macky!

I'm running near the end of first week of Flower. This week I have focused on temperatures and VPD. I turned off the ceiling fan because my temperatures were too low. This let my air temps rise a bit but wasn't the complete cure. Photontek (I'm wont' be complaining in the summer!) lights struggle to make enough heat for Northern Climate growers like me in the winter, so I have a constant seesaw battle with mother nature as she keeps fluctuating the temps outdoors. I am shooting for 70-72f in the reservoir and in the root ball and 81-82 at the leaf. I swapped out my old hygrometer for a new INKBIRD version which is extremely accurate. Anyone still running the black hygrometer from about 3-4 years ago, replace them with the new Inkbirds, and you won't be dissapointed. You are only as accurate as your instruments in the end. Up until this point I have mainly set my parameters from the top of canopy vantage point. I started noticing that those measurements were a good 10 degrees F different than below canopy. I decided to move my AC infinity sensor below the canopy to maybe equalize them out and it seems to have worked wonders. I am currently running 86.1 air temp above the canopy with 81.7ish on the leaf. Humidity is 70ish. These temps are definately where I want to be compared to where I have been previously. I wish GROWDIARIES would fix some of the weekly inputs for us HYDRO growers. Please GROW DIARIES give us an option for flood cycle duration and frequency during lights on and lights off. During lights on I am flooding for 5 minutes every hour. During the dark cycle I flood for 1 minute every 3 hours. I was flooding for 8 minutes every hour during lights on but my humidity was getting difficult to reduce and my pump running time was starting to affect the reservoir temperature. LECA has been difficult to figure out when it's 100% saturated. The odd shape doesn't guarantee the same watering every time so I tend to run the time longer to make sure everything is saturated. In the two graphs above you will see what it looks like when I find my "Sweet Spot". you can see where the pH finally steps up instead of down. I was running hot so I have been backing down with my EC daily for a while. You need to do this like you were stopping a train. If you want it to stop here, you need it to start slowing down way the f back there. My train has finally stopped after hitting the brakes roughly two weeks ago. As you can see from my pictures, not a single leaf shows any sign of nutrient burn even though I was running roughly 2.25 times hotter 2 weeks ago. It's almost like the plants slapped the wave, and I rode it perfectly. Actually, technology showed me perfectly. Thank you GroLab!!! One thing that automation doesn't have a handle on is culling. Today I located 3 plants that showed male flowers. One was Temple Kush x Zkittlez which was a bonus seed from my ETHOS grape pack purchase. No big deal. The other two males I culled were Cotton Candy Grape by Ethos. These were suppose to be female seeds so losing the space to males was heartbreaking. Luckily for me, these two plants were the two smallest in the tent. I was hoping to taste them but now the genetics are done here. I did take some clones a while back but the Cotton Candy Grape one didn't take. The bones have fallen where they may and I don't need to see anymore. Cotton Candy Grape is dead to me for now. Whether I like it or not. Hopefully none of the other seeds show male. Then there was 5.