Blue Dream - RDWC

Blue Dream was assigned the color blue for this grow. ===== 8/9 Germination Day 0 ===== Put about 1.5cm down into a rapid rooter that had been soaked in distilled water with h202 in it. Placed on top of a vivosun heating pad. I am germinating 3 other varieties (all sativa dominant) and have a fifth rooter I've used just to put the vivosun probe into for checking temperature. ===== 8/10 Germination Day 1 ===== Not much to report. Just been tracking metrics and will be spraying the rapid rooters and lid 1-2 times a day to maintain moisture levels. ===== 8/11 Germination Day 2 ===== Put together my cloning machine. It is sold as a kit by PA Hydroponics. The plan is to move the plants here after they have sprouted and grown tall enough to clear the neoprene nicely. ===== 8/12 Germination Day 3 ===== I drained the hydro today. I had been running it to get a feel for what the environment will be like inside the grow tent. I will fill it back up nearer to when I am going to transplant. I have the drain kit installed on my fallponics system. You can see I have an extra inch or so clearance than I need. I might try to get smaller bricks or build support from lumber in the future. I expelled the water outside into a garden. One pic is when it is working at full capacity and the second shows when it starts to trickle: at this point I shut off the pump. You can see the reservoir and plant bucket levels at this point. Next step was to drain the remaining water with a wetvac. I have been spraying the humidity dome but after talking to an experienced grower I added a few drops of water treated with h2o2 to prevent the rapid rooters from drying out. ===== 8/13 Germination Day 4 ===== I decided to move all the rooters to the cloning machine since I didn’t want to have to figure out the proper environment for both. For the cloning machine, I added 2ml h2o2 / gal to distilled water. I put 1 ½ gallons of water (and 3ml h2o2) into it. I covered them with humidity domes spritzed with water. The net pots couldn’t fit both the rooters and neoprene nicely so I cut the bottoms out. I tried varying levels of prong length to ensure the rooters didn’t go too deep. Now they fit better. But holey moley, while transferring them to the clipped pots I made a mess with water spraying everywhere. I should have turned the pump off for this part. I talked to a more experienced grower about how wet the rooters were getting and learned this type of cloner is more for clones and not for seeds since you can’t really drown clones. I pivoted by removing the pump and putting in an airstone from the hydro system. I will adjust the dampness by water level and air pump speed. I gave the rooters a gentle squeeze to remove some of the excess water. I hope the plants forgive me for trying to drown them. 🤣 I also turned on the inline and rotating fans and the tent had its first period of darkness last night since I swapped the lights to 18/6 timing. Big day for the lil ones. ===== 8/14 Germination Day 5 ===== I ended up adding another ¼ gallon of h2o2 water and found a good level for the air bubbles to be at in order to keep the bottom damp but not drenched. Now just hoping that the blue dream seed wasn’t a dud. 🤞 The tent seemed to regulate its temperature way better with the hydro system running. It is a good time to fill it back up and use a method described to me by @Lishrakk to make sure I set the water levels correctly inside the fallponics system: Use a wooden spoon (or in my case wooden dowel) marked with inches to fill the system to 2 inches below the net pots bottom. Let the system run for awhile Remove hydroton until you run into the wet clay. Measure this level and use it as a base for how high your water should be depending on whether you need your rooters higher or lower. And more tips from him to dial in the system easier: Take a gallon or two of tap water Measure its PH and PPM PH Down it to 5.85 -ish. Record how many ml it took Divide this by the number of gallons balanced Record this ratio and use it for balancing your water in the future And using a water meter on my hose to accurately track amounts of water added to the system. I bought a little air pump to power the cloning machine so the fallponics system could have its fourth back. At first I was worried it was too small so I put 4 gallons in there but it was drenching the rooters again so I removed some water. I’ll hone in on the right paramters soon enough. My meter said 40.6 gallons was added to the fallponics but I’m pretty sure I forgot to reset the 4 I had used in the cloning machine. I’ll make sure to zero it next time 😄 To the water in the cloning machine I added 1mg/gal each of micro, grow and bloom as well as 0.5mg/gal orca to give them a little taster of what’s to come. I remade my PH solutions and opened a second ph meter because my vivosun one was giving erratic results. I’m still not sure everything is OK as it only took 1ml/gal PH Down to achieve 5.86 PH. I’ll keep testing in the days to come. I will check the hydroton for how high it dampens tomorrow. ===== 8/15 Germination Day 6 ===== I moved Blue Dream back into the seedling tray. Hoping that the warmth helps her come up. ===== 8/16 Germination Day 7 ===== I gave up on Blue Dream. I went splunking and found that the seed had cracked open but the growth that came out was brown and didn’t look healthy. I also accidentally damaged the growth opening up the rooter. I don’t think it was the genetics fault but rather my inexperience and drowning it. I’ve popped another one and this time I am committed to following protocol to a T. I soaked two (one for the probe) rapid rooters in h2o2 water phd to 5.85 then squeezed out water until they were 25g. Blue Dream was inserted butthole up ~1/2inch into the rooter and a corner was placed over the hole. I put 4 drops of the h2o2 water on top, spritzed the humidity dome and placed it on top.The seeding tray was placed on top of the vivosun warming pad and is under ~190 ppfd lighting set to be on 18h a day. I will not disturb her for 3 days. If she’s too far off sync with the others to go into the fallponics I will grow in a soil pot or figure something else out. RIP Blue Dream. Long live Blue Dream! One of my cats entered the tent and did some parkour but everything was mostly unharmed–I had a small hole to patch in the tent. For now I am blocking the ventilation hole with my scrog net (it has a hard frame). She can probably still get in if she is determined but it should deter. I will probably make a chicken wire box around it so she cannot get in. I’ll also be more vigilant about clipping her nails in case she tries to scale the outside so there is less risk of holes. ===== 8/18 Germination Day 9 ===== I haven’t done anything with Blue Dream other than cut a little slit in the lid so I could close the ventilation holes tighter. It is retaining moisture well. Hopefully I’ll see it poke up soon 🤞 ===== 8/19 Germination Day 10 ===== Blue Dream (v2) is going gangbuster! It already has a small root poking out the bottom. It pays to follow the guides exactly 🙂 ===== 8/20 Germination Day 11 ===== BD growing. I put 40 ml FloraMicro, DynaGro, and FloraBloom into the system as well as 20 ml Orca. ===== 8/21 Germination Day 12 ===== BD continues to grow! Just waiting for some more roots before I transfer her over. ===== 8/22 Germination Day 13 ===== Still waiting on more roots from BD. ===== 8/23 Germination Day 14 ===== BD has grown in size but just one lil root poking out. I fed it 10 drops of water and respritzed the dome as it was getting a bit dry. I’m really hoping to transfer in the next 3 or 4 days or she’s going to fall even further behind the others. ===== 8/24 Germination Day 15 ===== Just waiting on BD to present some roots out the rooter so I can transplant (She’s got one little one right now, maybe 2mm out the bottom?) ===== 8/25 Germination Day 16 ===== I turned down the humidity and turned off the heat setting on the humidifier since it was approaching 75 degrees F and was at 74% humidity. It has been hot and humid here and I think our AC is struggling to keep up now. ===== 8/26 Germination Day 17 ===== BD was found to have a second root poking out the bottom so I decided to move her into the hydro. She isn't quite tall enough to fill up all the hydroton so I'll have to fill it in a bit more as she grows. Top fed. ===== 8/27 Germination Day 18 ===== I top fed twice today, roughly 12 hours apart and the last feeding with several hours before lights out. BD looks sad, I may have rushed her transfer. I am doing an alternate feed chart that I got from Lishrakk and has worked for him in this system which you only have to feed every 1-2 weeks (depending on where you’re at in the cycle). I might do week 1 veg nute reservoir swap (which will have some calmag in it) in the next few days. ===== 8/28 Germination Day 19 ===== Morning: Top fed. Evening: I was concerned BD was being overfed so didn't top feed.