Maui Grow - 2x4 Indoor

In week 5 of flower and decided to start documenting my indoor 2x4 grow setup. We currently just finished day 3 of week 5. I have my lights running from 9:15PM - 8:45AM. I am not sure how I messed up on my timer but that's been my schedule since flipping to flower. I have an A/C in my bedroom that I duct into the tent. I have my A/C set at 62F and the tent gets to around 71-75F with the lights on. Lights off it ranges from 68-70F. I have a small dehumidifier in the tent that needs to be replaced because it is not efficient. I have an intake fan running at full blast at all times and my exhaust fan is automated to turn on based on temp and humidity. Week 5 has brought on a lot of strong dank smells and a whole lot of weight to the buds. They are really starting to thicken up! I have not had too many issues with this grow so far and luckily, the tent in clean and bug-free. Lots of resin and terpene production going on and you can smell and see it increase daily! I am following General Hydroponics Flora Series 6-Part grow chart. I am currently following the medium strength chart. I'll measure everything out exactly as the chart suggest then dilute my mix until I get to my desired PPM of 1000-1200. I PH around 6.2-5.8 and then add my microbes. I changed up my watering technique mid grow due to an issue I dealt with and now watering 2x a day. Lights on and right before lights off. If my lights didn't run overnight, I would like to add in a 3rd watering in the middle of my light cycle but 2 a day is working for now. I water until there is a good amount of runoff. I measure the PPM of my runoff compared to the PPM of my inflow mix and will keep watering until the runoff is 300PPM or less over my input. So if my mix is 1000 PPM and my runoff is 1600PPM, I will go back and water or as I like to think about it, rinse off the coco until my runoff PPM is at 1300-1000. It is a little tedious but it's a habit I formed and it does not take much longer to ensure your PPMs in the root zone is perfectly where I want it. I defoliated right before flipping to flower. Then defoliated 2 weeks later, and then a minor defoliation on week 4 of big fan leaves. I most likely won't be taking off any more leaves for the rest of the grow unless they are really blocking the light. I am planning on harvesting in week 8 or 9, depending on when the plant is showing it is ready. For General Hydroponics line, it has been the same nutrient strength/mix from week 3-5. Next week, Week 6, we start lowering the strength and adjust the amounts as we get into the later stages of flower and eventually will be flushing. For my flush, I will be using GH Florakleen, GH ripen, Mammoth P, and Bio-Fizz. Excited to see how these girls turn out! I'll be adding my outdoor grow as well as a new veg tent that I setup yesterday in my room. Stay tuned!

As week 5 came to a close and we move into week 6 of flowering, I am having really high hopes for the end result. The buds started to get some light orange hairs which is really nice and they are really starting to thicken up! Towards the end of week 5 the plants started to show early signs of burn on their leaf tips, so I started the week 6 feeding a little early. In week 6 we bring the EC down quite a bit as we get into the late stages of flower. I also recently switch to measuring with EC vs PPM for ease and accuracy. Also at the end of week 5 I did a calibration on my coco for each plant as week 6 nutrients are much lighter. Coco Calibration Method 1. Mix up nutrients. 2. Water plants as normal and measure runoff. 3. If runoff EC is not at or close to the inflow EC a. Water more and keep measuring runoff until the runoff is at or close to the inflow EC 4. Do steps 1-3 for all plants (One at a time) Tips: - I use a shop vacuum that I stick the end in the bottom of the pot saucers and leave it on while I water so it sucks the runoff as soon as it drains out the pots. Then I measure, empty and water again until I hit my targets) For this calibration, I ended up using around 6 gallons of nutrient solution. Watering technique used is to measure runoff at every watering and make sure we are staying as close as possible to the inflow EC. It does not matter how much water you need to put through the pots to get to the desired EC on runoff as that is a benefit of Coco. My main goal is to keep my runoff in check and the plants seem to do better than I have ever grown before! The smell off these ladies are amazing and strong. I don't have a carbon filter and enjoy her smells and aromas all day long as my desk is right next to my tent. There were no issues in Week 5. Plants continue to look amazing and the buds are continuing to bud up and structure very nice! I'm excited to see the end result after the ripening and flush stages. Also the colors that are soon to come! Stay tuned! ______________ We are 5 days into week 6 and the buds continue to grow fatter and fatter on a daily basis. I'm really dialing in my EC and making sure to mix it at 1.1 EC and making sure my runoff is from 1.1-1.4. I started playing with the mix as I am getting used to the grow schedule and how the base nutrients effect the EC. I have found that doing 50% of the low strength calendar hits me right at my target EC and I don't have to dilute my mixture after. The smells continue to be strong and fill my house up. The weight is starting to make the colas lean over which is nice because it's opening up the canopy to get more light in. I'm very excited to see what the buds look like in week 7 and then we are on to ripening stage, flush, and then finally harvest!!

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!

Week 8 is finally here! We changed up the nutrient feeding to the week 8 on the feed chart. I am diluting everything at a 50-40% rate to keep EC within acceptable ranges of 0.8 - 1.1 EC. I started adding Terpinator to the mix and I do notice a significant smell increase vs. without it. I am going to keep using this as I think it is a great supplement. I did figure out that even though on the bottle and on the specific feed chart, it says it is a light formula that will have minimal impact on EC and will not burn your plants at the recommended rates - it will! First time mixing up my nutrients with terpinator, I had to dilute it because the EC was too high. I put the recommended amount in my mix, and checked EC and low and behold it was high. The next feeding I did a 50% dilution rate and that seemed to be ok if you are diluting your other inputs properly to compensate. ALWAYS make sure your EC and PH are in check prior to fertigating your plants. I am watching the trichomes on a daily basis and am looking to harvest sometime this week or next. I plan to dry it in the tent it is growing in as it has AC and good airflow. Once they are done drying, they will get trimmed up, lightly vacuum sealed and stored in the freezer. Updates will be coming throughout the week!

Week 9 is here and we are looking at harvesting! After checking the trichomes of just the top colas, I decided this week I was going to harvest. I am updating this post after I have dried and harvested the plant so do not have much more details. I flushed the plant this week with Flora Kleen along with terpinator and microbes. I cut down the plants and hung them up in the tent to dry using a clothes hanger with clips I got off of Amazon. It took 10 days to dry the bud and my temps and humidity would fluctuate throughout the day and night. I stayed in the mid to low 70s for temperature and humidity was at 50% at first. Then I added a humidifier and had it dry in 60% humidity. Will update the rest in the harvest update.