Spring-Summer Second Run Mixed Strains

Chronicle of the week During the first days of the week the plants continued to stretch a bit, but with less intensity than before. Since the support for growing is not needed like before, I decided to change nutrients in the middle of the week and go fully with the Bloom. During day 2 important defoliation to have a better air circulation and light access. Buds start to form, the change from last week is visible. Another change of the week is the weather, now constantly under 30 degrees and more constant humidity (50-65). This is the last update on plant heights: HB2: 67cm --> 74cm HB:80cm --> 88cm RG:47cm --> 52cm JH:47cm --> 53cm DSD1: 71cm --> 75cm GK1: 51cm --> 57cm DSD2: 64cm --> 69cm TD2: 62cm --> 71cm GK2: 57cm --> 63cm TD1: 42cm --> 43cm 11R/G1 66cm --> 72cm 11R/G2 59cm --> 63cm WG:27cm --> 34cm Depending on the strain and plant, still quite some growing at the beginning of the week, decreasing in the middle. Lamp: After the discussion (check my question) about the lamp's distance, I bought a lux meter to understand better the tools. Lamp specifics says "Mounting height >= 15.2cm" which seemed a bit too close (also the opinion of most commenters). Lumen range in flowering should be between 45k and 65k lumen, measuring around the higher plants showed values around 45k-50k (lamp distance 50cm), sensibly decreasing around lower plants. Lowering the distance (27cm from HB, around 35cm from DSD1) ends up with values around 57k. Since the reaction was very good, today I lowered the distance again (15cm from HB, 25cm from DSD1 and HB2, 30cm from the other plants). After some hours I can see no issues, also HB doesn't show signs of light stress for now. I'll continue monitoring the reaction and react accordingly. Homogeneous distribution of heights: This is not for experts with master SCROG skills, LST, and so on. Multi strain cultivation, both sativa and indica hybrids, is not easy and at some point it could be too late for a decent LST or a cut could be too stressy. A solution is to put some support (plastic boxes, rigid pots) under the lower plants, to have the tops at a similar distance to the lamp. It seems a very obvious solution, but you know, sometimes you just don't think at it. Nutrients: I'm following the suggestions from the producer (Talpa Substrates, from where I also bought the pre-fertilized soil) for this second run (first one was a bit a disaster, as you can see under my nickname, I'm a newbie, at least for indoor), which says to use the Grow during the pre-flowering. It makes sense because the plants need support for the high stretching, and also the composition supports a bit first flowering (15-30-15). The Bloom is 7-26-32 plus micro elements. Another point of confusion during the first run was the PPM/EC values, which I screwed up (as the Ph, and other stuffs), so with this run I decided to follow the producer's specifications (on Internet there is all and its opposite regarding the topic). During veg I started slowly and incremented to reach around 1.47 EC, everything went well. With Bloom I started with PPM 840, EC 1.6 (specifications EC 1.76). I also use Talpa Calcium Boost (in veg too) and after reading again the instructions (!!) I found out that the best way would be to use the NPK fertilizer till the required EC, then add Calcium. Did some tests, and Calcium added 220 PPM to the 680 PPM of fertilizer, with a total of 900 PPM and 1.8 EC (which is already slightly more than the specifications). Given my previous experience I want to avoid a block, but at the same time I want to use the nutrients to their max possibilities. The process is to increase to PPM 900, EC 1.8 for the first cycle, then increase the nutrients by 50 PPM. The upper threshold, if the plants react well, is EC 1.76 with only the NPK nutrients. Plants/Strains: TD2 All the seeds are feminized, but this plant was behind all the others in showing the female pistils. Right after germination, the leaves were deformed and it took a while to start the normal grow. At some point I noticed small suspicious bags, but decided to keep it and wait. After a while, female pistils showed up, and the plants developed well. During day 4 I did a close check and found still underdeveloped male bags, but only in some lower old branches. I'm not completely sure if this is hermafroditism, or the sex was not fully determined at the beginning (sounds weird, but the initial deformation suggests some genetic/seed issues). I'll check daily. 11R/G This experiment comes from my first run, where a hermafrodite golosa impollinated an 11 roses. Golosa is an indica dominant hybrid (80%), while 11 roses is indica. Both plants started to stretch vigorously during pre-flowering (the original strain are low size, small pre-flowering stretch), in a way that remind more a sativa behavior. The leaves also seem more on the sativa side. I did some research to understand from where this behavior come from, but there are too many possibilities in the parenthood. Anyway, nice experiment, curious to see the result. Conclusions: I'd say that the biggest lesson learned during this (and also previous) week, is "know your tools", whatever they are (lamps, nutrients, strains), and use what is needed to better understand them. This is important especially in case the used brands are not well known and documented. In my case lamp brand is mostly unknown and I had some issues in understanding the distances, the lumens and so on. The lamp is full spectrum, the specifications show the coverage, but the distance (15.2cm) appeared too close also for the more expert growers of the forum. For the nutrients I have been probably too much on the safe side, given the blocks of the first run. I'll keep testing both nutrients quantity and lamp distance, to get closer to the optimal values. This will definitely influence the next run.