Jisoo (Lemon Tree)

This is my second grow after coming back from a long hiatus. The first grow was purely for the sake of seeing what problems I would encounter, and this grow is my first attempt at being "dialed in." I use quotes there because I typically don't get too exact on every single measurement for the plant. I keep track of pH and I watch plants for signs of needing more food. The goal for the grow is to maximize results while still keeping the inputs very simple and minimal. I am starting the diary for this single plant run on the day of planting the seedling into the net pot. This seed already had roots growing out of the bottom of the Root Riot cube for a couple days before transplant. From now, through the entire cycle, I will leave the drip ring running to encourage roots to reach out sideways into the net pot instead of only downward into the bucket. I do have an air stone in the bucket, but it is primarily for agitation. The dripping action of the ring should pick up enough dissolved oxygen to keep the solution saturated. Having the air stone in a corner of the bucket just does a good job of circulating so that when I put in something to make adjustments to solution, it stirs the reservoir for me and I don't have to pull out the plant to mix. The bucket I'm using is called a Hydrobucket. It's a product made for DWC which is arguably very pricey for a single bucket. The reason I shelled out the money, is that the additional square area of reservoir allows me to get into the bucket without taking the lid off of the bucket and disturbing roots. During my first grow, I tried to run totally sterile with calcium hypochlorite in regular black 5 gallon buckets. That failed miserably. Every single week after nutrient change, I'd encounter root rot the next couple days after the change out. About halfway into the grow I switched to Hydroguard, and the roots improved drastically. I still ran into issues every time I changed out the water though. I noticed I never had issues when I just added water or solution back to the res, so I found these buckets and thought they would work perfect for allowing me to control the solution, and look at the roots, without having to pull the root ball totally out of the bucket. Water changes will be done by dropping a small sump into the the front square area. This time around I'm starting Hydroguard from day one in hopes of simply never running into a root rot problem at all. I'm thinking that with the ring constantly dripping the beneficial bacteria over all the roots, they should be very happy in there. There won't be much to add for the next few weeks other than pictures of progress. Since I won't have much to write until the plant is a bit bigger, I'll give a quick run down of the plan. I'm going to be installing a screen to train the plant under once the plant has developed to a point I'm happy with. To prepare the plant for a screen, I will be mainlining and training for either 4 or 8 main branches. That decision will depend a bit on how big and branchy she has been up to the point of getting her to 4 mains. If she is lanky I'll for sure top for 8 main branches. If she stays short I will use 4 mains. That's it for the first week! If I make any changes to anything I will note them in the weekly comments. If you're reading this diary, Thank you, and I hope your own growing goes well!