1st grow - Grandmommy Purple - *Now DWC*

12/25 - 12/31 Week 16 (week 8 after cloning) - 1st week of flower 12/26 - Ok, so this is a huge week. That is why I am updating early in the week. After switching the lights last week, I think I am seeing signs of flowering. So this will be the first week of flower. Besides the flowering, the big updates are that I have changed the system to be DWC and no longer ebb and flow... I really like my original systems design / the idea behind how the original system worked. So it sucks to have to retire it. But it's for the best as now I can rebuild better, stronger and hopefully way less clogging prone. Either way, everything seems to have come together as I had no choice to do this. Otherwise, the buckets would eventually totally clog and not drain and I don't even know how I would handle that. This is because I am no longer able to separate the net pots from the buckets. Since the bucket design I have has a ring tube going around the inside of the bucket, this causes the opening to be narrower than the bucket. The roots, over the past week, have grown into a mass in the bottom of the bucket and are no longer able to clear the ring tube. Since the tube is connected to the bucket I can't pull any of it out. So the solution I came up with was to take 4 5-gallon buckets and cut them up. I turned them into risers to hold the net pots and put that in the reservoir. The roots are exposed in the buckets and I fill the reservoirs with water. Pop in the air stones, slap em on 24/7 and boom... DWC I think. lol. I actually don't know anything about DWC and probably should have looked into it before doing this. But after I was unable to remove the net pots from the bucket to relieve blockage, I had to make a decision before I had a catastrophic failure. This week for the reservoir change today, I changed the nutes to the Bloom side. I will also be lowering the lights just a little to raise it up later with growth. Also, I think the plants are sitting lower now. So I'll drop the lights a bit. The last thing is that I have added a trellis net. I don't like it because the squares don't go wall to wall. But I put it up anyways. I'll go to the hydro store soon to get a bigger trellis net and put that up. So that's it for beginning of the week update. ======================================================================================== UPDATE: 12/31 - These weeks go by so fast and so much happens. So the plants are taking to the DWC switch well. I must admit, I have barely looked into anything that has to do with DWC. lol. I did, however, somehow start looking into VPD. Only cause I was cranking my exhaust fan one day and the VPD went down. I, not having any idea what that was, thought VPD/kPa were tied to how much air is moving or something. Funny that when I looked into it, it has an interesting impact on DWC stuff specifically. So.... now I am paying closer attention to VPD cause I don't want the plants to transpire too much, take in too much water over nutrients, or take in too many nutrients and not enough water... Yep, so there's that; vpd. The more I do this, the more complicated it can get and deeper the rabbit hole goes. Anyways, I thought the plants would drink more of the water since they are submerged in it 24/7. But I guess not. I bring it up because immediately after changing the reservoirs to DWC and refilling them, I was a little short on one of the reservoirs. So the 20 gallon res now doesn't fill the reservoirs to the level I would want it. So I have to start adding more water to the new batches. But this made me think about how the plants will need more water. With this thought in mind, I made up a new ~20+ gallon reservoir to feed the plants during the week as they drank the water. Well they are not drinking the same! lol... maybe this in addition to the defoliation/pruning they got they drank less. I don't know. But at this rate, I will have a bunch of extra res mix that I will have to dump soon. Maybe I will hold off on res change? I actually don't even know how I'm going to do a res change now. I figured I would try and get away with topping off as long as I can... lol this is all such a mess. Also, 2 trellis nets later... I have now obtained a trellis net style that I want to use. I have installed it in the garden... I felt weird about it cause I can see the calyxes and pistils all over the tops and I don't want to mess with them. But I had to tuck them under the trellis... I did super crop one top for science. I did leave a few others not tucked for science and yea we will see. I feel like I was way too late in using the trellis net and I should have just installed for support of branches at this point instead of canopy control. But since we are in the first week of flower still, I figured I might be able to get away with it. Although, what do I know?! lololol. Either way, it's done and the trellis is in and is not getting removed at this point until flower. This is something I'm kind of confused about; how to get the plant out of the trellis net. I lowered the light as well. Since I changed to DWC the plants sit a little lower and with the trellis net there is a defined canopy barrier. So I lowered the lights down to about 12 inches above. They are LED so I don't think this will be an issue really... I will look for signs of issues on the leaves / tops closest to the lights. But I think it should be fine and I will raise the light as the plants get taller. I do have a fear that that plants will not stretch much more. Either way, they have very very quickly recovered from the defoliation and are getting very think with growth again. It is a daily task at this point to go in and bend down fan leaves or remove them altogether to open up light to lower bud sights and / or to declutter a little bit. I monitor the under side as well for shoots that will not make it and will, in my mind, take away energy from the top flowering branches. This is a weird process though, because I don't know what can and can't make it. So there are some lower side branches I left to see what they do. There's so much growth, it's hard to track it all. I am doing my best to not be overly attentive to the plants. I just casually pluck a leaf here or and there along with some shoots. I am waiting for around the 3 week mark for the final and last defoliation. I need to read up on this more, but that seems to be the last time to do stuff. So I am trying to let the plants do their thing and not be too aggressive as I expect to have that opportunity in the coming weeks. I have upped the nutes being given substantially. Actually, this is causing me to think I will run out of Bloom part A/B before end of flower. So I ordered more along with some other things I either didn't have or only had 250ml tester bottles of. So I should be getting some boosters to add in soon to assist with bloom. Last thing I can think of is that I bought some oscillating fans to replace the static fans in the tent. Now there are to oscillating fans in there. One on the top sweeping over the canopy and one underneath sweeping under the canopy. Ok, bye. Happy new year. See you next week.