1st grow - Grandmommy Purple - *Now DWC*

1/1 - 1/7 Week 17 (week 9 after cloning) - 2nd week of flower 1/5 - The deeper I go, the more I think catastrophic failure is waiting for me. So far so good though, eh? I uh... think the plants are too big or... uh.. wide? It's just so much to manage and I cant reach a lot of the inner growth easily. Also, I can't spin the plants anymore cause of the trellis net and the cuts in the buckets would sheer off roots. So no spinning. I was late with changing the reservoirs this week. Well it was the first time to do something after switching to DWC. There were a few reasons for this. Mainly, after mixing up the nutes for the res change last week along with the switch to DWC I had mentioned that I made another batch of nutes immediately. Well... the nutes lasted until 1/3. This is where a question for me comes in... With DWC, do you replace water in the reservoirs with plain ph'd water or do you top off with nutrient treated water? Well, also I waited because I ordered some more nutes and they were going to arrive on 1/4. So I figured since I still had nutes to use for topping off and I had to wait til 1/4 for my order, I would just change the reservoirs on Wed instead of Mon. I don't really know if people are actually completely changing out reservoir water and cleaning the reservoirs every week or not. I mean it's a crazy thing to do. How do you even clean the things with the plants stuck in there? It's crazy... I feel like I do things the hard way. Anyways... what I do or have to do to change the reservoirs is as follows: I have this battery powered fluid transfer pump thing for like siphoning out fluids and I use that to get as much of the water out of the reservoirs as possible, then I take a hose and spray down the inside of the reservoir, suck up that water, then fill up with new nutes. This seems to do the job. I sprayed and removed the water a few times, it got clearer and clearer. So that was a good sign. Also, I did let the roots sit with no water in the reservoirs for a little bit to let any excess drain out to help in a total water change over. I feel like I'm just making this stuff up as I go. I should really look into DWC stuff.... The process is kind of a pain because of the time it takes to dump the water. Like the pump I use pumps out to gallon jugs. Then I have to slowly pour out or it will splash. I just started using 5 gallon buckets... but I still have to use 2 trips per reservoir because otherwise the bucket is too heavy with water. Maybe I will just rig up some kind of tubing to the toilet or something cause it really sucks to have to sit and pump out water into a container only to have to go and slowly pour out that container. Also, there is a limited number of containers so I eventually have to dump the full ones to continue draining. Otherwise, I don't want like full gallon jugs waiting for me. Also, just thinking about pouring out 20 gallon jugs in one sitting is kind of annoying lololol. I miss the old days of just turning the gallon jug directly upside down and not worrying about it. Anyways, the plants are way way too crowded. I was trying to wait until later to do another defoliation and sucker branch removal but I feel like I have to do it now. I am constantly tucking and bending leaves and I am running out of space. It's just leaves on leaves on leaves in some spots. I have been trying really hard to manage humidity. Because as the growth fills in like that, the more humid it is in the tent. So I have been upping the exhaust power and I placed a dehumidifier in the tent to aid with taking the humidity down. So then, today, after lights on, I will do another defoliation. It will be a heavy defoliation. Something I want to mention is that I have not really been paying any attention at all to the ppm/ec readings of the reservoirs. I have only been ph testing for daily adjustments in most reservoirs. I usually found them around 6.2 after lights on and Plant D was always at 6.4. That one also took a lot more ph down to get the ph down than the other reservoirs. But as time went on the same thing started happening in Plant B's reservoir. But Sawtooth and Plant C had reservoirs that were a lit more stable, ph wise and took way less ph down to adjust and stayed within ranges for longer. I feel like the change will do well for this issue. The point of bringing this up though, is to mention how I thought to test the ppm of the water before I dumped it and Plant D's was like 1866ppm hah. I think Sawtooth's was 16-something. I didn't really check. Also, this was before adding any water back in so it was probably more concentrated, but damn that was higher than expected. I will probably be topping off with ph'd water from now on... I did the nutes a little different this time and I also went deeper in on the Advanced Nutrients line up... lol... I figured since I had to get more part a/b I'd get some Bud Candy and Big Bud. I also grabbed enough Nirvana to finish out the grow. I will add that next week. *********But I didn't add as much Epsom this time************. Since that always slammed up my ppm I added what I wanted of the other nutrients until I was at 1266ppm, then I added 140ppm of Epsom salt. I don't know how much that even is cause I mixed up 10tsp in a gallon jug with a 1/2 gallon of water and poured about half in. That took it to 1406 ppm. I really wanted to make sure the plants got a full feeding of the base. I had been skimping on that and I had noticed a few odd lower leaves near the end of the feeding cycle so I wanted to really boost them. Actually, I do put the nutes into the mixing water in specific order I guess... For some reason, I always put silica in first after ph ing the water to 5.5. then I usually add any other micro nutes. Usually epsom salt next or if not right before the base. Here this will be easier, this is the order I mixed nutes into tank: 1) Silicablast 2) Big Bud 3) Bud Candy 4) Sensizym 5) Cal-Mag Xtra 6) Part A 7) Part B 8) *****Epsom salt -- added this last for reasons explained above I usually measure, thoroughly mix in, and ppm test for each entry in the mix. I want to give them a day before defoliation for some reason. So they got to eat and then the trim comes later today. One last note before I go. Sawtooth, along with the others have very distinct and noticeable double serration patters on their leaves. Well I found one leave on Sawtooth that had a triple serration, lol. It was a double serration's serration. I photo'd it. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- UPDATE: 1/7 - So.... defoliation was a massive amount of work. So much so that I had to split it up into 2 days. This is my fault for not being hyper attentive as the plants were growing to control some of this crazy growth. I am now starting to get a much better idea of when to do things and why. Like I definitely should have defoliated prior to the 12/12 switch. Then went into flower with the structure of the plant I wanted in mind. I kind of just flipped and was like, ok here we go. I don't like how high the trellis net is on the plants / canopy, but I couldn't push it down more because of how late I started using it. But I have pushed it down a little bit more. Kind of working it lower and moving the branches/stalks around as I do that. I'm only talking like 1-2 inches tops. I can't really lower the net any more. So it will stay at this level. I feel like I actually am utilizing the trellis net quite well. As while I was defoliating I was able to tuck and weave branches into different sectors using the trellis netting. So I was able to spread a few branches out that needed space and I thought that was awesome. Also, I raised the lights just a little. I think we are back to 18 or so inches above canopy. Some of the taller stalks were about 8 inches away from the light so I raised it up. The last thing I want to mention are the problems I am having with the DWC reservoirs. The first think is more annoying than anything but also a cause for concern to me: Some reservoirs take A LOT more PH down to adjust within range. I don't understand this at all. The PH has been spiking in all reservoirs. Well.... spiking is kind of a tricky way of putting it. All I know is that everyday, since the change to DWC, when I check PH at lights on it is VERY high. I consider 6.2 high. So catching all reservoirs around 6.4-6.6 PH was alarming. This is consistent. Then it takes 10x the amount of PH down to adjust. Like I used to have to use 5ml of ph down to adjust the ebb and flow reservoirs. But now, I am putting 30+ml in to adjust down from 6.4 to 5.5. That is crazy. At first it was just Plant B and D, where plant D was by far the one that needed the most PH down with the smallest returns. But now they are all starting to exhibit this. However, Plant C is the least affected by this. The fact that they are all different makes me think it's not something I'm doing. Part of me thinks it's because of the nutrient changes. Like I am using a lot of different nutrients for flower than I was for veg and I think the compounds in the flower stuff is causing this PH issue. I mean, I don't really care all that much as long as the plant looks good and I'm keeping it in check, but damn am I running through PH down fast. I don't know how to fix this. Part of me wants to totally flush out the reservoirs and roots. But I don't know how to do that easily. I mean, can I just use the hose and tap water to just flood and rinse the roots off? The tap will be 7.4 ph and full of chlorine... But I want to like wash the roots. Part of me wants to refill the reservoirs tomorrow with just ph'd dechlorinated tap water and let the plants sit in that overnight until Monday for the official reservoir change. I feel like this is going to be a race to the end... will I harvest before the plants implode on themselves? Oh the other issue with the reservoirs is that in 2 of them, Sawtooth and Plant D, there is a lot of foam forming. What is up with that? The foam is weird to see and doesn't really go away. It does dissipate more readily after adjusting the PH though.... I'm sure I could research these issues listed above and get answers.... But for now.... I have resorted to checking the PH 2x a day. We will see how this has an affect on the lights on PH. I hope I can harvest before I have to buy even more ph down... Stay tuned over the next 6+ weeks to find out if I fail or succeed. Find me on that same weed channel on that same weed day. Well I'm kind of random with the days... Oh I just remembered I turned my dab rig on two paragraphs up... I'm gonna go handle that. See you soon.