First Attempt (with 528 Hz informed water)

Welcome, ladies and gents, to the last week of this personal very first grow. It’s not that much a flowering but rather the d(r)ying week for both Sherbets. We are starting into it with the bigger lady at around 55% soil humidity and the smaller one shortly below 40. This does sound much still but isn’t. The soil humidity scale should rather considered somewhat logarithmic. Plants are happy between 90 and 70% but start to suffer below 60. With their buds being much more dense than Pineapples’, I guess they will take a few more days to dry. Even more as currently weather conditions are rather humid – yesterday’s rain brought outside humidity to over 80%. Luckily, the big fan’s filter arrived and I already installed it, so no more smell and the ability to lower leave/tent air temperature very fast. On the other hand, its usage will pull up humidity, so I fully separated their software control and now, although I cannot drive the big fan’s speed yet, have a variable fan and even a solution that is really not that noisy: Usually one of the Bonsanto blowers is always switched on. If humidity must be lowered, the second one is activated (but currently stopped too early upon reaching upper humidity ok range). If temperature or VPD must be lowered, the big fan is running. I separated the control logics into day and night (or drying) phase: During plant daytime, software tries to attain optimum VPD. During night or if drying phase is selected, humidity has priority and big fan will rather run only if leaf temperature or VPD is getting into critical range. Anyone here for marketing the solution? :D The dehumidifier inside the tent is always running, and having blocked its hose did not ruin it. But it’s really not that effective. Day 76: All running nicely. After some optimisations, keeping humidity really works great for drying stage now (blue line in upper right graph). I run first live view tests with a very primitive first installation. Sometimes pictures arrive defective, and camera clearly needs a better place. But hey, it’s sometimes working as expected! Day 77: Having morbid fun comparing curled leaf photos … Day 78: Both now very visibly dying, smaller one completely dry (0.5 %). The buds getting more fluffy on the outside, which makes drying them (at perfectly 50% humidity) easy. I managed to install IR lighting for the night – no, it’s not activated by photo diode and running all the time. I found a 12V IR LED ring in my Raspi toy collection that is now activated 3 seconds before a shot and deactivated right after, while photo frequency is decreased to 4 times the day interval. Also changed is the interval data is read from the sensors. Before it was every 10 seconds, and I noticed that actions like turning on main blower would often result in a very rollercoastering temp/hum graph. Now it is every 2.5 seconds and software finds it much easier to stay in programmed range. The photo handling is not perfect. Sometimes shots arrive distorted or multiple times, or the Mac daemon forgets to send data at all. Day 79: Installed much better camera and sensor holders that eliminate a lot of the picture waviness. Not all when all lights are running due to some interferences, but good enough for focus comparisons. Weather is putting a lot of stress on the dying plants. Which is quite fitting: Summer has manifested here all of a sudden, and the big blower is activated frequently to hold leaf temperature in an acceptable range. Humidity is still around 50, so let’s see if the taste will hold the promise made by the smell when I incidentally touch them. Guess I can turn off the lights and hang them tomorrow. Day 80: Recommended soundtrack for today: "Family Snapshot" by Peter Gabriel and of course Pink Floyd’s "The Final Cut". Today concludes this diary; only a review will follow. Thanks a lot for 1400 views, hints and recommendations which never gave me the impression to tackle this first grew all alone. I think I learnt a few things about improving the yield – let’s see if I got them for sure on the next diary. After the vacation.