Welcome everyone!
As the title explains- this is my 2nd time trying to grow in coco. First time went pretty well, but I didn't document it here on grow diaries. I actually didn't document for a few years on here and it feels good to be back. I am committed to finish this diary properly. My motivation comes from my excitement that this grow brings me.
First of all, I bought a new awesome lamp. Before I was growing under a combination of HPS lamps and a homemade COB LED lamp. As you might imagine, the light distribution and quality wasn't the best.
I also bought myself an RO filter. My regular tap water was pretty hard, so it was a pain trying to get the PH down every time mixing the nutes. I took me like 30ml of PH down to lower 20L of nute water to desired ranges every single watering time. Also the EC was already pretty high out of the tap, so I couldn't use too many nutes. Not like I paid any attention to EC anyways :D This time I will be monitoring it closely.
I also bought a few extra interesting supps from Terra Aquatica this time around.
Talking about the growing system itself- I will be using a automatic high frequency irrigation method with automatic runoff water collection, so when everything will be set up, it should be a breeze. This setup is heavily inspired by Dr. Coco from COCOFORCANNABIS. Last coco grow was a pain. I had 9 plants in my 4x4 tent and I had to drag them about every other day and water them 1 by 1.
Last but not least- I will be growing the famous Mephisto genetics. Super excited as I have heard a lot of good things about them. I picked 3 strains. 2 indica dominant, 2 sativa and 2 50/50. It might come out to be a challenge to grow them all together but I'm up for it.
I started the grow by throwing the seeds into cups of RO water for a little 12h soak during the night. Next day I placed them in wet paper towels. Both mango smiles germinated first in about 24h. Both sour stompers followed soon after and broke the shell in about the span of 36h. Strawberry nuggets took a little longer- first one in about 48h and the second one had me worried as it took about 72h.
I placed the seeds in rapid rooters after the broke their shell. And planted the rapid rooters in small pots of coco/perlite mix after the root emerged from the rapid rooter. I will do 2 more transplantations until the final container. After about 24h of the seedling sprouting I gave them their first nute feeding of an EC of about 400. I will be watering 1-2 times a day an upping the dosage by about 75 units every time during the next week. I feed full strength Fulvic and Root Booster but dilute the TriPart and CalMag to the EC I need.
This whole process is taking place on top of a heating mat and under a humidity dome. The root zone temp is about 25 degrees C.