First DWC White Widow Auto

Everybody has true leaves and a giant taproot. They're outgrowing the tote and are getting an upgrade tomorrow. The current one has an arched bottom (manually watered to be safe), and but the next has a flat bottom allowing for some water, making up for no dome. I started to bring the humidity and temp down slightly. I added a little rapid start and am cheating their light hours to slow/bulk up my first 4 - they had extra stretch on day 1-3 in the rooters. Substantially sturdier bases on the two that skipped the towel (however after a week they've evened out). That's the forever plan. I started a low dose nutrient/calmag mix (using RO water). They'll go into hydroton tomorrow since everybody has roots popping out the sides and I'll add 1/3 dose fungicide. I don't have enough daylight CFL bulbs to cover them in the tent without dropping the lux, so the big light is going on too. Next time I'll start them in a small tent under the CFL and switch to tubes for veg. A dual shop light fixture means I can pop in a second bulb when needed. Easy, cheap, fast solution. Between that and germinating I'll save a bunch of time. Moved into their tent on 3/12 and the leaves exploded overnight. The rooter bottoms are just touching wet medium so I'm not bothering to top water. The 25gal mix was perfect on the first shot at 5.7pH and 600ppm. My RO water starts at 7.5, so I buffered it with 10ml of down/up and only needed a 10ml boost to get to 5.7. Happy, leaving it. Instead of Hydroguard I'm using a 1:19 dilution of Southern AG and adding 1ml/gallon to start (upped it to 2/gal when water felt slightly slick. Fixed it) The plan is to do a nutrient/pH addback at least every two days (maybe my pH buffering will have helped). I'll be pulling samples from each plant and (hopefully) making an averaged-out replenishment concentration with pH balance once I see their nute:water intake. Damn you Excel, every freaking project! Week one in the tent complete. A few corrections made but for the most part we seem in good shape. I quickly realized how much minor lighting impacts have (and I want to keep as much light as possible) so I started trusting my light meter. Made all the difference and no guessing.

So far we're looking pretty good I think. If anybody sees this and says "sweet hell man, why did you do that?", don't hesitate, just yell at me! Watching your diaries has been essential, so thank you all for the documentation. 3/20 (after one full week in the tent) I bumped up their light and turned out to be the wrong move. Of course the problem child loved it. I enjoy having my light meter handy, but decided to get faster/easier/more precise and use a power consumption meter on my outlet. Now documenting lighting based on wattage draw, not lux. A solid $12 investment and less starting at diodes (which is giving me some issues even with strong LED glasses). I made a pH down buffer which adds back at 2mL/bucket/day. Blindly testing with the new meter but so far it's consistent, so that plus some extra fungicide has been my only supplement in 8 days. Can't complain about 5min/day maintenance on this. Soil what?! 3/21 I upped their nutes to veg week 2. Waiting until the weekend to do a full res change. One thing I'm loving about DWC - instant reactions. I'm doing all modifications first thing in the day, and by dinner I can see if something had an impact. As long as you're smart/conservative with adjustments, nothing looks like it will go tragically wrong in hours and it can easily be fixed. Log everything! **end of last week I did big (cheap) upgrades - larger air pump, bigger stones. Took the lid of my Ruby who wasn't looking so hot and her airstone wasn't producing a lot. The new gear corrected her overnight. Still need to calculate the true air volume I'm moving (for the records) but I can //hear a major difference in the buckets, especially compared to an awesome and silent pump. **Bluelab pH meter is my new friend, along with my old/cheap/bulletproof Dr. Meter light meter. I've checked it against the big brands, and the relative accuracy is fine for me at 1/10th the price.

We had an exciting week. Was busy with work so only a few photos. They're in full veg nutes and starting to smell great. I had an error early on with training that I couldn't correct (wasn't aggressive enough) which will bite me, but I'm going the extra mile to keep them open. Unfortunately, the stress did snap one plant in half. She got really droopy and a few hours later is back in action. Trying to help my blunder (and since I was pruning) I added silica. It's way easier to train in anything other than hydroton! Before I started I knew this was going to be a frustration. With the help of some youtube videos I should be good for the next batch. I did a bunch of cleanup. Topped/fim'd everywhere I could see. Took about two days until the smell came back and growth took off, so I gather they're happy again. Last weekend was the first full res change. I redid the math for my starting pH buffer and we're even more stable than before (daily change is +.1). Nutrients are dropping slowly, but I'm not happy with my cheap PPM meter and delaying an upgrade ( $ yikes). The Bluelab pH meter however, was an awesome investment. I have to say, the advance research is paying off. Your diaries have been really helpful (especially the missteps) and it seems like I got ahead of several DWC pitfalls before they started (mainly pH and slime). FYI, the rear-right plant was the one started days late, directly in a rapid rooter. Spacing is really far because she bypassed my tiny LED strip and only spent a few days under the CFL before going under the big light. Speaking of lights, if I had a smaller tent or was doing a single SCRoG I would be REALLY happy with this light for the price. Unfortunately, trying to spread out 4 plants to maximize my space means that a central panel has awful angles. They're still clustered and the falloff on the outside edge is 50%. I'm going into flower so the decision was made to swap lights (hard eye roll on that expense). The Blooms Plus is going on ebay, barely used.

We're moving into flower. Did a round of defoliation at the beginning and end of the week. I loosened training wires as they were cutting into stems, and one i cut off at the root. The plant didn't seem to care. The only real mistake I've made so far has been hesitating to train. Seems to bite me weekly now but it'll never happen again. pH dips about .2/day. I noticed that my light wasn't cutting it for the spread and density of the canopy, so the old BloomsPlus light is now a backup or possibly going to ebay. The new light from mars hydro is incredible, and the plants immediately reacted to even lighting coverage. Doubled the wattage so I can run it dimmer/cooler with the power supply on the roof. they were out of water by the end of the week and were due for a full res change, so rather than do it early I let their levels climb and kept an eye on them. They ended around 850 so I adjusted their fresh tank to 800, added silica, and made an extra few gallons.

I've been running my nutes high and they've been asking for more water, so I kept my ratio the same from the previous week. Adding the IR/UV light was a smart move and they're getting about an hour of UV with 18 of IR. Defoliation has been never ending but my system seems to be working. Node spacing on all but my one oddball looks great. Humidity is already becoming a concern so I'm starting with a dehumidifier in the room. No space in the tent to put it so I've strategically vented. If it doesn't stop climbing I'll have to duct the dry air exhaust into the tent.

Four very different plants than the last time I posted. The one in the back (with a different start to her life) turned into a monster. Not sure what she's going to do on finish but I have 30 stalks after thinning out the weak ones. Already did a grid in the ceiling with some plant hangers, so I'm waiting for the inevitable - bud sites are large and just starting to grow. She's the first plant to go, then clockwise for what I bet will be two weeks of harvest. The bottom right is so frosty I can't get a great photo - totally gray. All the remaining fan leaves have trichomes except for the bottom left plant (she got hacked weeks ago and not sure what's going to happen yet) The room smells awesome. Humidity and heat both went up so I had to combat that, but otherwise we're really steady. I've left them for days virtually unattended and see no signs of neglect.

Three of four are harvested with the last being the one that got accidentally chopped in half. She needs 5 more days. I'll do the harvest entry once everything is finished, but the first one dry yielded ~300g popcorn and 120g premium - a poor ratio but huge volume. She was over 5' tall. About to have a ton of bubble hash :)