A lot of growth this week, but they still look kind of pissed.
Dragon Energy - Moving really fast. Tall. I have started to train the side branching and will top this 1 soon. My goal will be to bring 6 main tops to flower then see how she explodes from there.
Alien Rift - A little slower veg, but that is always the case with this strain. Has the typical Alien leaf curling.
Indian Kush Cake - 1 is deformed still. The main stem turned into 3 tops. The smaller 1 I am keeping around in case I don't want to keep the weird 1.
I had some temp issues and a reservoir change on the bigger 1 is due. I mainly wanted to see what happens to the pH and EC if I let it go at this stage.
The night time temps have been high 78-81, so I added a mister/humidifier and now the nights and days are a few degrees cooler.
The heat waves seem to be over today, so I am hoping to get them back on track.
They are still at 16/8 light schedule, the growth is good enough and I am not going to change it to 18/6, just 12/12 next week sometime.
EC 1.2-1.4 - Ethiopian Flame is still at EC 1.4, which I think is high, but I am learning the limits of the nutrients. They dont look burnt, but they aren't so happy. The PPMs have stayed stable or even dropped to 680ish.
The Alien and Indian Kush Cake are at 580-600 PPMs (EC 1.2). The PPMs have been stable all week along with the pH the last 4 days.
pH 5.8-6.0 - The PH has been pretty solid at 5.9. I used pH down, but I have to use a lot to get it down to 5.8-6, so I let it stay and do its' thing and seems to stay right at 5.9. I think the FlaVUH really holds the pH stable. I am going to try and start my pH lower when I mix my nutrients and see if I can avoid the spike to 6.5+ when I do my change. I think the spike was from microbe activity tbh because my res foamed up good. So it could have been an interaction with the SLF, hydroguard, or some organic matter was in my res and caused some activity. We'll see, I'm just taking a guess for future reference.
Have a good week and thanks for stopping by! ππ
@Oozle, Haha! I used an antique iron! Stability is the one thing I miss about using the 6" pail inserts with the built-in net pots in my buckets. Since switching to 4" net pots and fitting them through a hole cut out of the bucket lid, I've had a couple of leaners. I do like the 4" pots in that they're much less expensive and require far less hydroton.
The garden is looking great. Too true about the mutant plants being the most interesting ones π I look forward to the results of your cloning efforts - have you cloned anything before? That's something I still have to try.
@StunFlower, I have some extra room so I figured if I can keep 1 or 2 nice plants in my stable. Some strains I get so much yield it takes me a year to go thru it. I am hoping the clones will allow me to run more, smaller plants.
@Oozle, Thanks for the info! Sounds to me like your first try was pretty darn successful. It's something I've always been interested in trying. I'll get to it one day!
@StunFlower, ty! I cloned some for the first time last week (8 Ethiopian Flames). I made a little DWC cooler for them. They rooted, but I burned them pretty bad (too much feed). So I am simplifying my strategy this time.
The Ethiopian Clones showed roots and are in soil now, so they should make it. I think out of 8 original clones, 6 or 7 made it. Not bad for my first try.
I am going to mother 1 of the Ethiopian flames if the smoke is excellent.
This time I cut the Alien and Indian, used the rooting hormone and put them right into starter plugs in a humidity dome. Seems much easier than having to manage a reservoir. I will keep you updated with my results.
Congrats on the harvest and thanks for the impressive grow report. Your comments about the terps in the DWC run vs. soil is very interesting. Disappointing that the DWC grow didn't net the expected result this time around - like you say, could be environmental and/or the change in nutes.
I recently read that terps in flowers grown in DWC are not as strong as those grown in soil because of the humidity levels associated with DWC - "the plant doesnβt go through the natural short periods of drought that other plants do, which is what increases terpene production." Not sure how true this is - smells a bit like bro-science π
@StunFlower, Well drought stress does increase sugar content in fruit (apples in particular) trees, so I think that's where the theory comes from. But it would take someone to be very precise on how much drought stress and when.. so it isn't just stop watering "x" days before harvest and you get a better terps. So mostly bro science for cannabis growers until there is a study on how much and when to start the drought stress. If it is a fact, it should be reproduceable over and over again.
I've had better or the same results with this strain in DWC, so I definitely wouldn't say soil > DWC, just in this instance haha. I'd have to do a lot more plants and a lot more strains before I came to that conclusion.
I do get more expressions in soil, but that could be how I feed in DWC, so I've been bringing down my cal-mag and N more lately to see if I can match the color expressions I get in soil.
@grzegorzdelaurans, no. I am running different nutrient lines for different plants. 1 plant (Alien Rift) is on Ventana nutrients. The other 3 (Ethiopian and North Indian) I am using botanicare. I was trying ventana nutrients out and I didn't have enough nutrients to finish them all. Week 2 of flower I switched all plants except the Alien Rift to botanicare.
@StunFlower, I have clones of it rooted into 1 gallons now. Im hoping to run the clone of it in december. Hoping to get some better pictures of the red/purple as it gets a bit older.
I've had some higher than I'd like water temps as well with the hotter weather we've had this summer. Thankfully it's come down to a more comfortable level (70-71) over the past week or so. Your seedlings look great. Good luck with the new nute line - any reason for the change?
@StunFlower, A couple reasons. Botanicare is great, cheap, consistent, and easy to use but I have some pH problems. Im hoping this line is more stable.
The Silica in this line is more stable than potassium silicate, so I am hoping that alone will help the swings.
But the main reason is to try out the FlaVUH product. It has some proprietary stuff in it that is supposed to increase terps etc. IDK how true the stuff is, but it wasn't too expensive and figure I'd give it a shot.