1st grow - Grandmommy Purple - *Now DWC*

11/13 - 11/19 Week 10 (entering week 2 after cutting transplant) 11/15 - It's been a few days since I updated, so I'll do what I can to bring this up to speed. I have been documenting and all that so here comes the info. Pictures uploaded and will probably update last week with photos as well. I think I locked down that overfilling issue for the moment. That will change as roots grow but all I have to do is reduce time on the pump and we will be good. So that's checked off. As we move forward, I will decrease the time between flooding. This week I put it down to 2h30m off before it floods again. Also, I didn't like the gaps between the buckets and the lid letting in light, so at some point I made aluminum foil collars for the holes. That seems to work for the moment. I moved a few of the reservoirs for easier access because when I first put them in I thought it would work in theory but in practice I had to rearrange a little. It's better now and easier to access each res for water testing. So every Monday I will be changing the reservoirs out and I changed everything on 11/14. I took this opportunity to move things a little and arrange air hoses and cables and the such. While doing all this and with the constant testing I am doing(I will do less down the road most likely) I am thinking this system setup is not going to work for me long run. The maintenance or labor really involved with removing the water from each then refilling is annoying. Plus, after a while it will be hard to remove the bucket from the res due to plant size and maybe trellis mesh. Getting the water out is the most annoying part really because I can't just pump it all out into something. Because that would get too heavy. So I pump out into gallon jugs(at least I can see how much water I am taking out and what it looks like) and dump. Refilling is much easier as I just have a pump in the 20 gal mixing res and pump to each res until full. Doing this I noticed I am definitely at more than 4.5 gallons per res because after putting 20 gallons in the mixing res, I ended with half a gallon after filling the 4 reservoirs. So that's an interesting note. I mean, I'm not going to hand fill gallon by gallon to measure or I'd go crazy. I'm going to be working out some kind of better way to do this with one res. I do love this ebb and flow style system so I just need to probably build shelving or racks to raise the plants, do just buckets, and run tubing for flooding and draining out the tent to the master reservoir. I just need to design and put that into action. Ha! But seriously, I would much rather mix, test, drain and fill just one res instead of 5(technically 4 for plants and 1 mixer). As for the plants, the one that was looking deficient definitely started lagging behind. It is now the smallest of the four. I looked into what the deficiency could be and it may potentially be Potassium related? It seemed convincing enough to me for me to adjust the ph of this res lower than the others to help with intake of potassium. Either way, it is doing better. It even reclaimed some yellow on the cut lower leaves. So I am pleased with that. I had planned on filling this res 1/2 way with mix and then filling the rest with unmixed ph'd tap water but I didn't end up doing that. I forgot and it got a full res like the others. So we will see, it was doing better so.... Maybe it will catch up. Putting the information into this site about what amounts were used seems to indicate I was very heavy on the epsom salt in comparison to other stuff... That's crazy cause I put in A LOT more last time. Either way, this time after I added nutes to the res I tested for ppm. The base water was 159ppm and after adding 5tbsp of epsom salt ppm was 306ppm. So that was what I was looking for... Although, after looking through, uploading, and labeling the photos here I feel like there is about to be a too high Nitrogen situation occurring. I can see the weird green color wanting to start. I lowered the amount of some nutes as well and lowered the feeding from last week almost 200ppm. Last week ended up being 754ppm and this week was 566ppm. I also added more part B overall to up the potassium and phosphorus side of things over nitrogen. Hopefully, this will be reflected in the leaves in the coming days as it has not been 24 hours since res change yet. The one that was too tall and I reseated it lower in the pot to be shorter is now back to being the tallest and is the one in the photos with the praying leaves. I read about this and there is much debate weather or not this is good or bad. The overall consensus seemed to be that it was good, if not great, but only because you're walking the danger line and may be about to show signs of light stress. Since this was the only plant showing this, I didn't have any issues turning the light down a bit. It was at 100 ppfd but I lowered to 70-80 ppfd. The light is easily 3ft above the plants at 15-20% power. The height and speed of growth of this plant forced my hand and I topped it to it stays the same height as the others. I will do my best to keep a level canopy, but the special branch is really short and stubby as expected. I seemed to have solved another problem by diligently monitoring the ph and not allowing over 6.2. There are no new leaves and have not been any new leaves with burnt tips or yellowing tips! I believe this was a ph issue for me and no other variable was causing this. I did, however, notice an issue with the leaves. Some of the tips on the serrated leaves were pointing up, like bent up. I think this was because for 2 or so days I let the humidity get to 30-40% as I ran out of distilled water for the humidifier. It's getting colder so I am constantly battling hitting temp and while maintaining humidity. I cannot wait until a few weeks from now when I can shoot for 55-60% rh. But, right now, since they are young and aren't big bushes yet, it takes a lot to maintain 70%. The symptoms started easing as they settled back into higher than 34% rh. The last and most awesome thing I found all 4 clones have the double serration trait that is highly sought after in indica skunk blends. Or at least a phenotype that is hunted as it signifies skunk genetics present. At least that's what I thought was decided upon. So I have a rare whorled phyllotaxy branch and on top of that it has double serrated leaves. I actually noticed it on the special branch and I have since named it sawtooth since it looks like a vicious sawblade. I cant think of anything else for now. Well typing out the test results for this week so far I remember how much I don't really trust the meters. Also, the reservoirs seems to have shot up fast from 5.5 to 6.0 after res change and a little less than a day of feedings. Maybe runoff. Maybe its the bags I put in there... I did rinse them with tap water and they that is 7.8ph but that shouldn't really be an issue. hmmm. Either way, I added 2ml and dropped the ph right to 5.5 again. So go ahead and raise up see what happens. This is good though that it's going through the range. Although, this plant or system or something seems to like to keep ph at or just above 6. But I cannot let the burnt/yellowing tips come back. So we will see. ============================================================================================================= UPDATE: 11/19 - Ok, so a few things. Updated week with photos and ph/ppm readings I have been taking. All plants are showing signs of female plants. I mean they were feminized seeds so I didn't expect anything less, but it is still awesome to see. Also, the bags that I thought were saviors... aren't. Well, I was hoping the holes in the "mesh" would be tight enough to prevent roots from growing through but they can grow through. So I need to find a smaller micron bag. This is actually proving very difficult. I'm working on it, but damn can't I just get a big bucket sized rosin bag to contain the damn roots so they don't grow into the reservoir? Jeez. lol. Also, something happened with the timing across all the buckets at the same time! I think it happened after I pulled each net pot to check the root progress and the bag solution and didn't reorient the bags in a way where I had them off the bottom of the bucket(I had it like that before) and it increased the time because the bag was preventing draining. So I had to cut some time off the pump time since the drain time was longer. I wasn't going to mess with the bags much because of how they are designed. Like the bags taper a little. So, what I need or want is the bag to sit just above the bottom of the bucket. That way the roots can have as much space as possible without inhibiting draining. However, when the bags are pulled up to make this happen, it gets narrow and hugs the net pot tight. This causes a few issues. One is that it makes the bag taught/tight right at the exit of the net pot holes for the roots to just grow into. Then two, is that it kind of sheers off the roots a little when taking in and out of the bag even if the roots aren't growing through the bag. I mean, if I pull the net pot out and there are roots growing through the bag, I carefully pull but if they break or get cut by the bag oh well. I was planning on cutting roots anyways before finding the bags so this is fine. I still want a better bag though. I need to work on redesigning the system or building a new one while this one is running and either wait or switch because these issues are just adding up. I want more.... ease I think. I need to figure out a way to ensure exact draining time every time. I have flooding down, no prob. But I need exact drain time every time without something being able to stop it. I need to corral the roots. Lastly, I really want the reservoir outside the tent and one res for 4 plants. So I don't have to test 4 diff reservoirs. Although, I do like the ability to attend to the needs of a specific plant individually. I have some things to work out, but for now it's going pretty well. I cut a few leaves off Sawtooth. It has too many leaves. I think It's the shortest plant now but has the most leaves. I looked into it and I think it is more than that whorled phyllotaxy assessment. I think it's actually something called fasciation; "is a genetic mutation of a plant's growing tip, and it can visibly affect the stem, flowers, or fruits. It often leads to multiple extra flowers being produced on the affected stems, typically with many secondary blooms surrounding the normal, expected one.". I was reading about it because after closely inspecting the plant I call Sawtooth/Special Branch it seemed like the one stem was like 2 stems merged growing together. So I searched something along those lines to find people discussing flat stems and fasciation. It also appears that whorled phyllotaxy is related in some way to fasciation. So there you go. Furthermore, people were talking about how it was cool as a novelty, once grown out and harvested the buds were not good compared to buds from other bud sites. Meaning I have decided to top this one. It's actually going to be an adventure to top this plant as the stem is flat like double wide and there are leaves and shoots growing in every direction. I think I found the spot and can probably find another one if I let it go a little longer. See, I keep forgetting the cuttings are pretty young. I mean I did top the other one, but that one is growing fast. Actually, that one is the closest thing to what I expected plants to look like and grow like compared to all the other growth I've experienced from this plant as a whole. So I don't know if I should just top it now or wait a little bit longer for it and other shoots and leaves to develop. I think I'm going to top it soon... After I lowered the light to 70ppfd all the plants started praying. So I must have hit the spot. Then it started dissipating so I raised the light intensity to 80ppfd. Trying to chase the praying leaves. At this point, my plan is to raise the light to see praying leaves then hold there until they stop doing that, then raise a little bit more to get them praying again. As it seems to be just the top new growth and the other leaves are super flat, well mostly. Actually, I don't think the bent up serrated leaf tips were a humidity thing... not sure what that is. There were some wrinkly leaves starting. But this plant seems prone to that. The leaves don't seem to like to be smashed up against each other. This creates that microclimate people always talk about and it seems to morph and twist the leaves. So I added another fan to the tent to increase airflow around the plants. Hopefully, this and the more steady humidity will bust that up. Temps have been low here though so it's harder to keep perfect temps in the tent without constant observation. Once I can raise the light intensity up this will help with adding heat. I just need to hold off a little while longer. Shit I also still need an evaporative humidifier cause buying distilled water all the time sucks. ph and ppm tests for the week: 1000 11/13 |Res A: 5.9ph/781ppm | Res B: 5.9ph/878ppm | Res C: 5.9ph/879ppm | Res D: 5.9ph/824ppm 0200 11/14 only tested Res C - 5.9 added 2.3ml ph down and tested 5.5 Res change 5.5ph / 566ppm 1030 11/15 | Res A: 6.0ph/(554/623)ppm | Res B: 6.0ph/614ppm | Res C: 6.0ph/614ppm | Res D: 6.0ph/614ppm Drops added |Res A: 2ml = 5.4ph | Res B: 2ml = 5.6ph | Res C: 2ml = 5.5ph | Res D: 2ml = 5.6ph 1800 11/16 | Res A: 6.2ph/(531)ppm | Res B: 6.3ph/548ppm | Res C: 6.2ph/550ppm | Res D: 6.3ph/557ppm Drops added |Res A: 4ml = 5.6ph | Res B: 5ml = 5.6ph | Res C: 5ml = 5.4ph | Res D: 5ml = 5.4ph 1000 11/17 | Res A: 6.0ph/(537/574)ppm | Res B: 6.0ph/574ppm | Res C: 6.0ph/594ppm | Res D: 6.0ph/594ppm Drops added |Res A: 2ml = 5.5ph | Res B: 2ml = 5.6ph | Res C: 2ml = 5.6ph | Res D: 2ml = 5.7ph 2130 11/17 | Res A: 5.9ph | Res B: 5.8ph | Res C: 5.9ph | Res D: 5.9ph 11/18 All res had 6.0 so added 2ml across all res and got to 5.7 11/19 5.9 across all res, ppm between 580-540