1st grow - Grandmommy Purple - *Now DWC*

===================================================================================================================== 12/4 - 12/10 Week 13 (week 5 after cloning) 12/6 - Ha! So that mesh net bag really didn't work, huh? I mean it's my fault it got like that. I got lazy about separating the roots from the bag for a few days and well here we are. The roots look awesome though. They are so white and growing evenly out of the bags. But the buckets are now full of roots. I really have to solve this root problem. I will ask for help. I have a potential solution on its way here. I ordered a much finer mesh screen but it's just a sheet of mesh and not formed into a bag. So I will have to figure something out. The plants are getting taller. All of them are at or around 16 inches. Plant B and D are the largest with Sawtooth(plant A) behind and Plant C in last place. Plant C was the deficient one though and the amount it was held back while recovering is easily showing. I also topped all the plants at different times and that totally affected the plants' structure. Last week on 12/2 or 12/3 I topped Plant C and Plant D for a 2nd time. I cut both the main shoot tops and now there are 4 instead of 2 instead of 1. I think I did that right. On 12/4 I begun serious LST with Plant C. All plants have LST on them. Since Plant C is the smallest and shaped like it is, I started training the branches out to make it bushier. Topping the main shoots should also push growth out so this should aid in the bushening. I do need to continue monitoring the plants and will apply more LST soon. I would have today but I did a bunch and am done doing things for right now. I was going to change the reservoir yesterday(12/5) but something came up and I was only able to mix the nutes. After sitting for a day the PH rose on its own to 5.7 so I added 4ml and it went back to 5.5ph. Then I split it up. The plants are drinking a lot of water and I am starting to have to replace gallons between the 4 plants every few days. This is fine, but it is interesting seeing how much they drink. I am not sure if I should replace with mixed nutes or just dechlorinated ph'd water. What I am doing right now is feeding with the left over mixed nutes from the reservoir change to the reservoirs that need it until the left overs are gone. Then I use tap water(dechlorinated) as needed until the next res change. I have decided that I am going to tough it out with this system layout until the chop. I did order tools I think will help me deal with what I think will be issues. Like I need a ZERO water level pump, that way I don't have to remove the reservoir and physically dump out the water. So I grabbed a drill pump I will use to get as much water I can out. Then I will grab my really long hose and bring that in the tent to spray clean the reservoirs in the tent and pump out the slime without having to clean it out of the tent. I uploaded photos of the nutrients I use that are DARK and filled with particulate. Photo'd are Part A and B-52. Look how B-52 makes the water cloudy. A lot of this settles and makes this biofilm slime all over. it's gross really. This will work for now until I can fix this before the next grow. Some other changes I made - I lowered the light because I needed to get more light energy to the plant without turning the light up so I lowered it to about ~24 inches above the plant tops. I figure they will grow into this space. I have them at ~500ppfd and ~30 DLI. I could probably lower it more. But it's fine for now. I'll raise it with them as they start stretching in flower if they get too close to the light. I have also increased the amount of feedings to 1x every 1hour 30minutes. I had to reduce flood time because of the ROOOOOOTS. So flood time is at 1min 50seconds. But I will most likely have to reduce this more and more as the roots fill out the bucket. I need to fix this soon... Last change was the nutes. Well, I mean I have been increasing the ppms of the feedings. the PPM for this feeding came to 769. I upped all nutrients added. In a 20 gallon reservoir I mixed: 10 tsp Epsom Salt 50 ml Silica Blast 100 ml of each; Part A and Part B 50 ml of B-52 That's all I can think of for now. I will try and update the week with more photos and diary entries as we move into next week. I do foresee a switch to flower in the near to very near future. I am thinking either flip after next week or the week after. Like I will finish this week out and definitely do the next week. After next week though I will either start flowering or do one more week of veg. I will have to because I will run out of Part B of grow lol. But I am looking for a certain height I think. Actually.... I have no idea when I should start flowering or like what the reasons would be that someone would want to start flowering. I am expecting the plants to double in size. So I am trying to get the plants a little taller before I flip cause I want them to really fill out the tent. We will see I guess. ok ok ok lastly lastly, I added some up close photos of some leaves with double serrations. The trait went away for several weeks after the cutting transplant. But the leaves are reemerging and the trait is dominating new growth. I was worried it would go away forever. So glad the double serrations are back. =========================================================================================== UPDATE: 12/7 - Well I messed up. Plant B and Plant C did not get water for 12 hours and it was my fault. I caught it 30 mins before lights out and flooded. I misted them a little and I flooded an extra time for both when I adjusted the ph down. OH YEA that reminds me on plant B's reservoir when I found the no water pumping issue I ph'd downed too low like 5.3. So it was starving and thirsty and I hit it with too low ph lol. What happened was that when I was changing the reservoirs I had the GENIUS idea to rotate the pump so the intake was facing down. It actually worked great when I did that to pump more water than usual out so I left them like that for feeding after refilling reservoirs yesterday. I did notice that 2 were not pumping water and I rotated the pumps back(Sawtooth and plant D) but I left Plant B and C with the intake facing down. Apparently they weren't feeding. I noticed this because I checked the ph before lights out after I woke up and each res was totally different all over the place. Then I checked the pumps cause I remembered the issue and yep they weren't pumping cause I'm an idiot. This sucks cause the plants were heavily manipulated by me when I changed the reservoir and I was exposing the roots a bunch. So I exposed them probably drying out more before not feeding for at least 4 cycles. I also cut a lot of leaves off the bottom of plant B cause I wanted to clean up undergrowth and improve airflow, so it was hurting. The last thing that made it not great was that I had also lowered the light and increased the ppfd/DLI so. So I starved B and C and then blasted them with light then blasted them with full power feed right before and during lights out. They are only 2 or so hours out of lights on. I checked the roots and they are all still white and looking good. I feel so bad. I'm sure they will bounce back.... 😬 =========================================================================================== UPDATE: Early 12/8 - Plant B and Plant C are fine and looking great. My idiocy gave me quite a scare there. The worst part was knowing I just have to wait and not to mess with them. I didn't and everything is fine. I mean I figured as much when I checked the roots and they were looking healthy and fine even after not getting flooded for 12+ hours. I think with there only being 7 drainage holes and them being a tiny size in addition to the top of the bucket being blocked by 9 inches of hydroton/leca it probably locks in moisture/humidity pretty well in the root zone. Now I just have to avoid messing up like that during flowering when it really counts... I ordered a bunch of things to try out. We will be going off.... no wait... further off the rails soon. Should be fun. Late 12/8 - Plants are doing awesome. I went in after lights on to do LST on all the plants where needed or could be applied. I am trying really hard to grow the plants horizontally before the flip. Like I am trying to grow them wider instead of taller at the moment. I figure the will grow vertically a lot in flower. So now is the time to maintain structure and canopy. I think we are really close to flowering... Definitely thinking the week of the next reservoir change is the last week of 18/6 cycle. =========================================================================================== UPDATE: 12/10 - Not much going on to end the week. Everything is looking good. At this point I am putting all my effort into spreading the plants wider before I flip to flower. As I expect vertical growth in flower and right now I'm working for horizontal growth. I'm also trying really hard to puff out Plant C. Since it was deficient in the beginning and behind I want to get it as close to the size as the others as I can. On an unfortunate side note, my LST on one of Sawtooth's branches was too aggressive and I started a split or something at the base of the branch that connects to the main stem. It was one of those really bad moments. But I assessed the situation and its just a minor split starting it looked like. I mean it's not good but I propped up the branch with some foam so the split part is now pressed back up against the main stem. I'll keep it like this for a bit but... I really need to LST this branch down, lol. It's the tallest branch on the plant too. So now it's throwing off the whole canopy. As time goes on I keep thinking more and more about when I should flip to flower and why I haven't already. I'm not entirely sure but I feel like I should stick it out and wait just a little more. However, at this point, the plants are starting to touch each other and join canopies. Sawtooth touches Plant B and Plant C touches Plant D. They would all probably touch each other if I didn't have the space in the middle to separate and work on the plants. Today I did do a lot of defoliation on plant C as I am really trying to direct growth energy. So I cleaned up undergrowth and a lot of the bottom leaves. Like a semi-lolipopiing. Not really though. Just trimmed up. I also LST and tightened all existing ties to plant C more than any of the others as the goal is to bush that one up. Part of me is thinking flip the lights to 12/12 at next res change... but I will stick with the plan and do that after this change. Yea I think that's going to be the plan. I need to look in to what to do to start flowering. Like I don't know when I change the nutes, if I should ease into that, or how that goes. So I will be heavily researching that before. This next week is going to be eventful because I bought a bunch of things that we are going to use to try and solve the root problem along with the refilling of the reservoir problems. I will post photos and all that next week as I use them... hopefully it works perfectly and we can get through the rest of the grow with minor issue so then I can focus on a redesign for the next round of plants.