By continuing to use the website or clicking Accept you consent to our cookies and personal data policy and confirm that you are at least 18 year old. For details please see Privacy Policy and Terms
This week I started a new grow in my small grow tent with a new custom living soil recipe. The seeds were sown directly into the soil and germinated after three days. Domes weren't used for germination. Right after germination, each of the ladies received a dose of water-soluable mykorrhiza (solved in 25 ml water per plant).
The current leaf surface temperatur is 26°C (~79°F), I'm targeting a VPD of 0.8 kPa and thus RH of ~75%.
The lights are at a distance of 30 cm (~ 12 inch), dimmed to 250 PPFD and are running 18 hours/day, resulting in ~ 16 DLI.
The soil is an own mix consiting of wormcastings, coco, perlite, chalk, gypsum, kelp, neem, corn and basalt. I usually use pumice instead of perlite but was empty on this. For P, I usually use soft rock phosphate. This time however I used superphosphate to do an earth test to see if this has an impact on my microbes.
Why using superphosphate and coco in an organix living soil recipe you might ask? That's simple - I'm a hippie-dippie vegan dude who doesn't wan't to use peat (sustainability and stuff) or animal slaughter house wastes. Thus, I try to come up with my own recipes to avoid that stuff.
Since my bloom-tent will be occupied a bit longer, I decided to slow everything down by lowering the DLI to 12. Thus, I'm keeping VPD at 0.8 a bit longer (leaf surface temperature is 25°C/77°F, resulting in target RH 75%). Plants will therefore also need less water.
Besides that, the babys are looking happy and healthy. One stretched a little bit more so I bended a piece of wire for here to hold on.
Also, everything is water only. I'm using plain tap water without pH-ing anything.
This was a very chaotic week for the grow. One of my LEDs broke and a harvest is taking longer then expected so I needed to rearange my tents. As a result, this 4 babys are now sitting in the middle of the room without a tent, only under their light, after being moved between different environments way to much. Thus, the ups and downs in temperatur and humidity were pretty intense the past days, causing some of the leafs to curl and to have some spots. Nothing unusual if the babys get treated this way.
Besides that, leaf surface temperature ranged from 23°C to 26°C (73,4°F to 78,8°F), RH from 48% to 75%. To reduce stress, I'm still dimming the lights to 15 DLI (upped from 12 DLI last week). Since the low DLI lowers growth, plants also need less water. If healthy grow continues, I will increase DLI to 20 over the course of the next week.
Also, they got a sprouted seed tea this morning. Nothing fancy, just 100 g alfalfa sprouts blended in 500 ml water fairly distributed between this 4 and 2 other babys.
This has been an exciting week for the grow. The temperature and humidity are still fluctuating wildly (VPD is jumping between 0.7 and 1.6, temp meassured on leaf surface), so the babies are now showing clear signs of stress. Since I can't change anything about this situation at the moment (the tent is still occupied for about 3 weeks), I decided to at least repot the plants to larger pots to reduce stress at the beginning of the week. The plants have responded well to this so far and are showing healthy new growth. So today I decided to start training. Here I prefer supercropping and defoliation. During the next few days, the plants will get a tea made from sprouted seeds and aloe as well. Today, the earth was still too wet for that.
I admit it, I've definitely had better grows. But one after anonther.
Unfortunately, the babies still have to stand in the middle of the room, where I have no way of controlling the temperature and humidity. This results in the plants being exposed to a VPD value of over 1.5, which causes a lot of stress at this stage.
To counteract the stress, I repotted them last week, also because I had to start training.
The training (supercropping and defoliation) is going very well so far, the plants all have at least 4, more like 6 topps. The new grow is looking healthy now.
Due to the stress, however, the plants have a small infection with thrips. But that's not a big problem to that extent. I will be doing a foliar spray with neem oil over the next few days and if that doesn't improve it will work with predatory mites.
Next week the plants can finally move into their tent. There they are given a week to get used to the situation, and then flowering begins.
On Wednesday (2 days ago), the babies were finally able to move into a tent where they are supposed to form a sea of green with a couple of older sisters. Although I had planned something else, I had to think of something new because one of my LEDs broke.
With better LEDs that emit less heat and an inline duct fan with intelligent controls, I finally have the opportunity to give the plants the environment they need. At the moment I am keeping everything on low so that all plants can get used to the new environment and because I use a foliar spray with neem oil every day (for 5 days) because thrips have crept in due to the previously very poor environmental conditions.
Since supercropping gave me enough tops per plant for what I planned, in terms of training I'm switching to occasional defoliation and very light bending but only if absolutely necessary. The plants already received more than enough stress. If I had known how stressful it would be for the plants, I would have never decided for supercropping.
So far, new growth looks healthy while signs of old stress are still visible.
The week started by finishing the foliar spray with neem oil and soapnut which I did 5 days in a row.
After a day of rest I then threw the scrog net over the plants. The older sisters of the Criticals stand on the outside, the younger ones on the inside, so that by bending I can achieve an even height of the plants.
Once I've filled the screen sufficiently, I'll go into bloom.
The 4 plants of this grow are in different soil. 2 stand in my proven soil mix in which I'm only testing a different source of P. 2 others are in recycled soil, which is the first time I'm testing this "recipe" like this. The plants in the recycled soil are noticeably smaller than the others and are showing signs of nutrient deficiencies while the plants in the proven soil only showing old signs of deficiencies and thrips on lower leafs with new leafs looking healty. So the recipe doesn't seem to work.
Apart from that, the plants got a sprouted seeds tea with fresh aloe and spirulina algae this week.
The lights are set so that all plants get around 25-32 DLI.
VPD fluctuates between 1.04 and 1.08 during the day. Everything is set to dehumidify at night, since VPD then doesn't matter.
This is the last week before I start flowering. All in all it was very unspectacular. VPD and DLI are on point at around 1.1 and 30. The scrog screen isn't quite full yet, but that will happen during the stretch. During the past week I also gave another sprouted seeds tea with aloe.
CustomLivingSoilGrower
