Maui Grow - 2x4 Indoor

Week 7 has arrived and buds are really swelling up! On Monday, I defoliated almost every single fan leaf. I am not sure I would do this again as it definitely shocked the plants. I did it because I didn't do enough defoliation early on in flower and the lower bud sites were really lacking and I wanted to try and fatten them up by getting more light on the buds. Since defoliating, the smells coming from the plants were not as strong as they were prior to defoliation. As I type this, we are the day after defoliating and the smell is back to being strong but not as strong as it was. I would give it another day and she should be back to full production. I do think it was a good call as there were quite a few lower bud sites that were completely blocked of all light and I can really see a difference in them after 1 day, so I am stoked for that! With this week, we adjust the feed schedule. I also added a couple more supplemental nutrients to the lineup. We introduce GH Ripen this week and I also picked up a GH Diamond Nectar for Humic Acids. The interesting thing is that the GH Grow was increased this week vs. last week. I am thinking to support the swelling in the buds. Another thing I did differently this week is customizing the nutrient recipe. Up until this week I was strictly following the feeding chart from GH. I was aiming for a target EC of the medium strength but using the low strength numbers on the feed chart. Doing this still got me over my target EC and I was needing to dilute my solution with Cal-Mag water to get to my target EC. Since I am comfortable with the flora series line of nutrients after using it the entire grow, I decided to start adjusting the percentage of the base 3-part nutrients. I found that diluting the low strength feed by 60% would hit me at my target EC after all my nutrients added, including PH'ing. This is HUGE for me as I will be using 60% less of my base nutrients and saving money! I adjusted the base nutrients to compensate for adding the full amount of the supplemental nutrients on the feed chart. For example. I diluted the base nutrients amounts by 60%. Then I added all my supplements at the low strength recommended amounts. Now on to exciting new things on order that should be arriving soon! I wanted to prep for harvest time so I ordered everything I needed for harvest. I also got some new grow tools and other supplemental nutrients. I am also planning out my next grow season after this gets harvested and will be making some major upgrades to the grow environment and nutrients to really maximize my results and make things easier with less work. First, I designed a auto drainage system for the next grow which is going to save me TONS of time! I also will be adding these supplemental nutrients as soon as I get them: - GH Armor SI - GH CaliMagic - GH Flora Nectar Fruit n Fusion - GH RapidStart - Rhizoflora Terpinator - Yucca Wetting Agent My goal is to use all of General Hydroponics products on the next grow to see how the results are. I also want to have a more stable mixture of EC and using all of GH products, will make diluting custom recipes easier. I also am planning on getting a larger 4x2 tent with more vertical space to allow the drainage system. Anyway, I will go into details on the next grow in my next diary. For now, check out the massive amounts of pics and videos I took this week and let me know your thoughts. Thanks! 😀 ***UPDATE - 4 days into Week 7*** This is an update for the heavy defoliation I did at the beginning of the week. The defoliation definitely shocked the plants. I could tell because a few things. 1. The smell. The smell just was not as strong as it once was. It is still in recovery mode if I go off of the smell and how strong the oder was prior to defoliation vs. now. I am starting to get constant whiffs of the smell today (night for the plants) so that is a very good sign! 2. I noticed with the same amount of watering I was getting more runoff than prior to defoliation. The EC of the runoff was also significantly higher than pre-defoliation. This required me to have to water with more nutrient mix than normal to get the runoff back down to my input EC. I cannot say this for sure but here is what I "think" is going on. The plant was not able to uptake the nutrients due to the defoliation and shock that there were more salts left over in the media by the next watering. Also without the fan leaves, that are used for many things in plant growth such as photosynthesis, and the lack of leaves cause the plant to uptake less water. I did remove multiple pounds worth of leaves so the lack of plant material could contribute to that. Final thoughts: I am definitely not going to do this ever again. In the future, I do plan on defoliating hard a week prior to flipping to flower. Then after that, only as needed. To define as needed - if it is clearly blocking lots of light from other bud sites, I'll remove. I'll remove everything below the canopy where the light cannot hit as that will not get developed and after this learning experience, I would say, it's better to not try and get the things down low to grow, but focus on the canopy and the buds that are in the range of the lights. Also to encourage airflow, I will strategically remove fan leaves. Besides that, I am going to let the plant grow normally. Reducing/preventing shock, preventing disease and pests, and preventing deficiencies are going to be my main focus moving forward. Managing inflow and runoff EC is always going to be #1 but besides that, preventing the plant from the above will be my focus and I believe that will produce the best results. I'm excited to take these lessons with me to my next grow! ***Update*** This is an update for the EC and nutrient mixing with General Hydroponics Flora Series and additives. I was doing my math wrong. Silly mistake, I know. But Glad I caught it. For now, a general dilution rate is 50% of the light strength feeding chart. Then adjusting specifically from there depending on the additives being used. For example. this week, I reduced the base nutrients to 35% of the light strength, so I could use the full dose of the additives - ripen and floralicious. Here's what I am currently doing: - Full strength recommended silica additive (Mammoth Silica hardly effects EC) - Half to Full Strength for CalMag - (I did not know about buffering coco when I first started this grow and noticed that I need to be at full dose for CalMag) - At least half strength on base nutrients (adjust as needed) - Full strength on additives (These are nutrients not your base, calmag, silica) For me: Floralicous, Koolbloom, Ripen - Half strength of Humic Acids - Half strength on Microbes (I only started doing this this week. I have been doing full strength at every watering. Microbes usually are a recommended application rate of once a week. I water with a lot of runoff as my growing technique and believe I should add it to every watering. I do not think you need to do full strength and I was wasting money doing that. Half strength at every watering should do the trick) ***Update*** Week 7 has come to a close and I am on day 1 of week 8 as I type this. Just fertigated the plants with week 8 ripening feed schedule. The plants took 5 days to fully recover after the heavy defoliation but at least they are recovered now. I'll be uploading the other batch of pictures and videos from week 7 and update the diary for week 8. Stay tuned!