1st grow - Grandmommy Purple - *Now DWC*

1/8 - 1/14 Week 3 flower; day 10,000,000 1/11 - So good and bad things. Good thing - flowers look great. Bad thing - many flowers and leaf regrowth causes hard to control high humidity. Good thing - After monitoring ph more closely and checking 2x during lights on I noticed an improvement with ph swings and less ph down has been needed. Bad thing - I had to change the reservoir water so hopefully this issues doesn't come back with replenished nutes cause maybe the problem went away cause plants ate all bud candy juice. ::shruggy face:: Good thing - In addition to the ph correction, I have been topping off the reservoirs with ph'd water or distilled water and that, in addition to keeping ph in check, has reduced the foam issues in some reservoirs and also helped keep the ppms down. Bad thing - The increased amount of water in each reservoir means that my 27gallon tote for mixing is no longer large enough and I have to go and get a larger one as each reservoir is holding 7 gallons. I will need at least 35 gallon tote I think. Good thing - did I mention the flowers look great? Bad thing - doesn't really smell like anything yet unless I rub a frosty leaf, but even then very tame smelling. Kinda like berry gunpowder. But the gunpowder is on the front of the smell and berry is a secondary note. Looking forward to smelling this evolve. Good thing - we are marching steadily toward the end. Bad thing - I am losing my mind Lol, so here we are. Week 3 of flower. Early week 3, but we are getting there. I definitely burnt the tips with too many nutes. Some leaves have the dead tippy tip and it curls up. But its only like a mm of a mm little piece of the tips of some leaves.... So with this in mind I have begun reducing the nutes and will also not be replenishing the tanks with nutes anymore unless the ppms are down. Yes, I am now checking ppms along with the ph. Probably should have done that initially but hey, what do I know? Oh, well actually nothing. I'd like to say this is easy, but it's not, and there's only more work to come. But I am really looking forward to some of the future work..... Anyways, I am not sure if I should keep reducing the ppms either. Because, the way I see it, was the plants were getting fed more and more in the ebb and flow and that had a high ppm so I carried it over to the DWC change. Since the plants didn't immediately revolt or show terrible signs of rejecting the DWC and high ppm, I kept up with it. Granted I was also adding in new fresh nutrients and over time caused a rise in ppm to 1800-1900 which is like 3.6-3.8 ec. They were probably at this ppm level for a week before I did anything. Only week 2 did I start backing way off that and added in water to bring ppms down. My point is, the plants seemed not tooooooo bothered by the high ppms(well burning tips and pistils turning red here and there) so I don't want to go from 1400 last feeding ppm to like 800 ppm this feed. I tried to reduce what I could and ended at 1151ppm final. This is after adding in 148 ppm as my tap's baseline ppm. So realistically I added 1003 ppm of nutes. Also, I had to count the gallons coming out of the mixing reservoir for the first time and I ended at 23 gallons. So I have been mixing in 22-23 gallons of water, not 20. I will make corrections to the nutrient calculations moving forward beginning with this update. Anyways, I had to count the exact gallons because the 27 gallon tote is no longer big enough to fill each of the 4 reservoirs with 7 gallons each. I added a lot of water to bring the ppms down and I figure I will keep the level it was at. So each reservoir can only get ~5 gallons. So what I am going to do is mix up another 12 gallons to distribute between the 4 reservoirs so I can hit ~7gallons in each res while I go out and get a bigger mixing reservoir. I will probably mix the 12 gallons weaker than the first mix to keep ppms in check. OH, I just remembered, I deleted epsom salt from this feeding as it raised the ppm way too much and I don't have time for that. I can't think of much else. The last thing I do want to mention / talk about is the fact that the plants have bounced back very quickly to the defoliation and are definitely beginning to crowd each other. This is causing humidity to rise and become difficult to manage. Like I put it on highest exhaust and it only took it to 46% rh during lights out with a dehumidifier as well. Although... I'm not sure how effective the dehumidifier works in a situation where the air is being replaced so rapidly. Ambient humidity outside the tent is mid 30s. The point of all this being... I am going to have to defoliate 1 last time, probably near the end of this flower week or when it becomes an unmanageable problem as I refuse to allow mold, mildew, bud rot, or any of that cabbage. That's all cabbage and I don't want none. Part of me really wants to strip the plants down with the last defoliation. We will see.... I do promise a defoliation in the future. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- UPDATE: 1/11 still - I know I updated before, but I wanted to add some photos and since I was doing that I should probably also mention what I did today at lights on and how that went. So at lights on, I checked each reservoir they were all 6.7-6.8ph after the res change yesterday, less than 24 hours ago. Also, each reservoir had the foam and a good amount of it. But it's all white foam. I guarantee it's from nutrients mixing with the air bubble at high ph cause it goes away when ph goes down. Then I checked ppms and they were 1200ish. So what I decided to do..... was just add water. Hah! Anyways, I thought each reservoir would take around 3 gallons, but they took only 2. Either way, the 2 gallons took all the reservoirs' ppms down to 850-900ppm. This is perfect. I'll keep it here I think. I was doing the research I was trying to avoid and it seems like people keep a low ppm in the dwc reservoirs. Like 600-800ppm for flowering. So..... Ill keep it 800-900 for now and try to maintain that ppm by adding water or nutes when needed until next reservoir change. I am really focusing on this now because I don't like seeing the burnt tips and premature red pistils. Let's stick with the change and see what happens. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- UPDATE: 1/13 - Not much to report on, which feels nice. Things are starting to level out with regard to the reservoirs and issues I was having. The foaming in Sawtooth's reservoir was really... um.... voluminous. It's definitely something in the nutes. All the reservoirs had it, but Sawtooth's is always the craziest. Although, when I checked at lights on today there was way less foam in there and in all the other ones. The pHs were all not what I would call high and I didn't have to adjust a few. Even though there is not much new activity to report on, I am documenting the tests so I can track it. I think the plants are growing just a little tiny bit. I see them inching their way up little by little. Although, there can't be much left in the vertical tank anymore. With this in mind, I have begun starting to swing the temps, well the best I can, so there is a larger gap between lights on temp and lights off temp. Lights off I can hit a pretty low temp right now because of Winter but the average is around 62f right now. For lights on I am aiming for 75fish, no higher than 76f. I will bring this down as we move through flower. But for now we are going with that. The average is probably 74f or so and that is good enough for now. I really want to try and induce some colors on this. But I don't want to do anything detrimental. So I will swing the temps within reason and not drastically. RH is an up and down issue, lol. But really it's about time I think, for the last defoliation. I don't really know how I would do this one though. Because all the leaves I would want to cut are, well, a lot of them are sugar leave looking leaves. I know I can grab the fan leaves off, and the seed bank even suggests removing larger fan leaves for bigger harvests, but the problem is all the little leaves sticking off the bud site stalks. Like there are so many bud sites it's super crowded. Don't get me wrong, I can, so far, keep the humidity easily under 60%. But I don't know how much farther under 50% I can keep and hold it. I think I will be fine with a lot of air flow. I have my 6inch exhaust fan at 60% power so the air is flowing. There's also the 2 circulating fans(one above and one below canopy) and I did put in a 3rd fan under the canopy blowing up from center. I am trying to prevent dead air pockets... Part of me thinks I should cut out some of the bud sites that are right at the canopy. But it's hard to think of reasons why I would do that... other than to improve airflow and not be so crowded. I think I will just be as careful as I can and I will have to make several passes looking for larger leaves and leaves that are crashing into each other. The canopy is pretty thick in some spots again. This will be my main problem to close out the week: How to defoliate at this stage? I know I can remove the fan leaves, they will be the easiest. The problem is with all the little leaves that will probably be those sugar leaves(?). Like I don't know how close of a hair cut I can give the plants. I might just have to strip some down and see what happens... My main concern with this is reducing contact between the sites as much as possible to improve air flow and to assist in lowering humidity for later in flower. Because if I shut down the exhaust rh will spike to above 70% fast. I have never done this before, but I can tell a lot of flower is coming and I don't want any issues with that after all this. Sawtooth: 1/12 @ 1800 - 948ppm after adjustments 1/13 @ 2000 - 5.8ph @ 940ppm - This was before replenishing with plain ph'd water - 918ppm after adding water back and I adjusted to 5.6ph to let it rise up and see how long it takes to get back to 6ish 1/14 @ 0115 - 967ppm 5.7pH Plant B: 1/12 @ 1800 - 958ppm - 6.6 ph - downed to 5.5ph 1/13 @ 2000 - 6.4ph / 1040ppm - added water and ph down - 808ppm / 5.5ph 1/14 @ 0115 - 6.0ph / 967ppm - added water and adjusted ph - 859ppm / 5.7ph Plant C: 1/12 @1800 - 950ppm added water - 858ppm. 1/12 @ 0200 - 945ppm - ph 5.7 1/13 @ 1700 - 5.5ph - 959ppm - added a little water but ran out 1/13 @ 1938 - 890ppm - added more water down to 828ppm 1/14 @ 0115 - 845ppm after adding water, ph was 5.4 I added a tiny little bit of ph up on this one to get to 5.6ph Plant D: 1/12 @ 1800 - 909ppm, added water to 858ppm 1/12 @ 0200 - 952ppm - 6.2 ph, I must have just left it cause there are no notes about changing the ph 1/13 @ 1700 - 6.4ph downed to 5.6 - 799ppm - added ph'd water and some light sprinkles of nutes to 919ppm 1/13 @ 1738 - 888ppm / 5.5ph 1/14 @ 0115 - 906ppm - 6.1ph adjusted to 5.6ph