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"I'm back" 2nd coco run this time with high frequency irrigation.
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.
So I started germinating the seeds on 21.01. 23:00.
22.02 22:00 Both Mango Smiles and Sour Stompers had opened the their shell. MSs more than both SSs
23.02 20:00 First Strawberry Nugget cracked it's seed
25.02 14:00 Second SN cracked it's seed.
I will count the days here starting from when I placed them in the water cup to germinate.
As you can see, SN2 took much longer than the rest but eventually got there. I was checking on the seed quite often and was a little worried. But it did seem that the seed was slowly getting bigger, it took that as a good sign. At one point I took the seed and scuffed it a little bit against a matchbox carefully. That may have helped it break it's shell.
The seedling went on growing. I was watering them 1-2 times a day upping the feed EC by about 75 points each time.
But soon it was becoming obvious that something was wrong. Day by day they were showing more and more droopiness. I dismissed it at first as seedlings sometimes to tend to act weird at the start of their life, but on the last day of week 1 it got so severe that I couldn't ignore it any longer.
I decided it must be the humidity dome. I was spraying it pretty often wanting to keep the humidity high as the humidity in the grow room was about 30% and I know seedling like it pretty high. Well it was too high. The plants weren't transpiring and that's why they were losing their posture. Also I was starting to see signs of CalMag deficiency. I didn't know if that was related to the humidity issue as if the plants weren't transpiring, they also weren't pulling in nutrient water from the soil. Or maybe I wasn't upping the EC fast enough.
So I removed the humidity dome and started watering the plants no less than 2 times a day upping the feed every time.
After fixing the issue from week 1. Week 2 was looking much better. The plants were slowly recovering. On the pictures you can even see the point where normal growth resumed. I think I lost about 2 days of progress because of this issue but I'm glad the plants recovered so fast and we are back in action.
Removing the humidity dome also allowed me to place an oscillating fan on the seedlings to strengthen them.
I was also spraying them with some CalMag for safety as I did have some reasons to believe they were slowly becoming deficient in it.
Other than that this week was mostly upping the feed dosage every watering and today 03.02 they recieved their first full strength seedling dose of 1000 EC.
The PH of the feed I'm giving them hes been about 6.0-6.2 for better Cal absorbtion.
In a few days when they will be growing their 3rd node, I will start transplanting them to their next container of about 3L. This won't be their final container yet.
That is it for now.
A little late week 3 post. The pictures taken are last day of week 3. I'm having trouble posting here as I am very low on time lately.
So week 3 went more or less good. I transplanted the girls to their new pots. That process went fine. Everyone seemed to be doing fine except SN1 and SN2. Especially SN1 as it started showing weird burn symptoms on 2 pairs of its leaves. They progressed a little bit and now seem to have stopped. That was very unexpected and weird as all the other plants were perfectly fine. I was feeding everyone the same. Thankfully it sorted itself out. The problem with SN2 is that it is growing very and I mean very low to the ground. It isn't stretching at all. I have never grown a plant like this. And her leaves, while not discolored or anything like that, seem to be weirdly wavy and kind of down to the ground. Also showing some minor signs of temps being too high, which is definitely true but unfortunately can not be resolved right now. It isn't severe anyways. So far I can say that Strawberry Nuggets is the most sensitive strain out of the bunch.
During week I expect to be transplanting Mango Smiles again as they are growing really fast. I'm also planning on doing some topping. Mango Smiles 100% as I heard they can get very tall. They are kind of ready for topping right now, I just haven't decided to which node I want to top them.
I'm definitely not touching Strawberry Nuggets taking into account how sensitive they are and I know they will grow short anyways so I don't want to risk stunting them or anything like that.
I will probably top Sour Stompers too.
Also I have to start building my automatic watering system which I am planning on doing this week.
Hello everyone! I promised to track this grow very closely this time and ufortunately life got in the way. Here is a quick sumup of the grow.
First of all- One of the sour stomper plants unfortunately didn't make it. It died at about week 4. The main stem somehow had rubbed/broken down. That's why it was falling down. It was almost like a mini beaver had chewed it off at the point where the stem touches the riot rooter. At first I thought nothing much of it, maybe it hasn't been rooted in quite well yet or something. And I was constantly touiching it when watering, that made it worse. Soo the leaves were dropping and the plant looked very weak. Then I decided cut thr rapid rooters top layer and found out the severity of the problem. Tried to tape it up and other things, but it was too late. At the end it appeared all good as the remaing plants got so big the I had some space issue so I wouldn't have been able to fit another plant in anyway.
At that time I finally made my self-draining saucers. I took me a while and a lot of effort, but finally they were ready and working well. I also installed the self watering system and flowering was starting. Pretty soon I started noticing weird leaf symtoms. Brown spots, different kind. Some plants had it more, some less. Sour Stomper looked pretty good throughout the grow. Mango smiles seemed sensitive and Strawberry Nuggs were pretty strong until the end.
The grow was basically me experimenting with the setup- changing watering schedules , changing ppm, ph and all that stuff to keep the leaves looking healthy and it was very hard I have to admit. Probably my hardest grow in that regard. But somehow, the bud leaves remained healthy and the buds really fattened up good. I got away with an amzing 700G dry bud harvest which was def a new record from one grow. And the bud quality is very good too!
Next time definetly no more than 4 plants as they got pretty big and I thought it was a little overcrowded. I was doing some good defoliation too. I should have defolited strawberry nugs more tho. Sour Stomper got some amazing bud development from top to bottom because it was was growing next to strawberry nuggets which were really small most of the grow. They actually took the most time to harvest even longer than Mango smile. Mango smiles were ready quite early. Sour Stomper was just in time!
I topped sour stomper and both Mangoi smiles, left SNs both normal. Looking back at it, the way I grow them, Should have topped SNs too. Would probably have more space in the middle and longer side branches. Probably wouldn't have been as bushy!
I followed the full Terra aquatica feed chart until the end. I was supplementing with CalMag a lot as I thought the symptoms could have been from a CalMag deficiency as this was my first grow with RO water.
Overall a very challenging but good grow at the end. First time no mold problems. A record breaking yield for me. Basically surpassed the upper limit for all plant probable harvest sizes. Got good smelling quality bud. Very happy overall and will continue experimenting with Mephisto beans in the future for sure! I guess what I like the most about Mephisto is how close to description the plant is, very stable genes in that regard.
Next time I will also have to start feeding plants higher PPM feed faster at the very start. and during flowering. But still not 100% sure what caused the leaf symptoms.
sevengreenfingers
