Blue Berry DWC

Mar 14 – Mar 21 -A quick rundown on my setup. • Grow tent 2'x2.5' • 1x5g Bucket x2 large airstones (*edit: added 2 additional medium stones and turned output on the pump way down, there was just way too much vibration in the floor all throughout the place) • 45LPM airpump (overkill, but I don't run a chiller so I like to replace as much DO as possible, I've never had root issues because of this and using Hydroguard) • T5 fluoro for seedling stage I usually use for clones/moms • 400w MH/HPS combo • 6" 440cfm • Carbon scrubber for flower • Thick rubber anti-vibration mat (most of my noise comes from bubbles inside the bucket) • 24/7 Nutrient monitor Nutrients: 300 PPM of GH Gro and a couple drops of rapid start. Lights: I had the 400w MH running at 50% for the first few days. I bumped it up to 75% on the 21st and a day or two after roots hit water I'll switch it to 100%. Seed was started in a Rapid Rooter, I kept it inside of a water bottle I cut in half then put it back together to keep humidity high. My PH diode went bad while it was in storage after moving to a new apartment, so I had no idea what my PH was for the first week or two. I'm guessing it was between 7 and 8, I knew it was high by the deformation of my leaves and twisting. Not a big deal she will grow out of it. I'm using tap water at this point. Nutrients fed at recommended Ratios per GHE charts (I do not follow recommended dosage only ratios) I monitor the plant how it looks and feed dosage based on eye and nutrient PPM uptake. For example, GHE recommends 2.5 ML/gal for the 3 part Flora series in early to mid veg 1-1-1 ratio, and a Ratio of 2-2-1 (Gro-Micro-Bloom) late veg I add my base until I hit the approximate concentration I'm looking for. When I top off my water every day I check PPM to see what the plant has used if it's used 20PPM then I add 40ppm (essentially just doubling what the plant used) of my base in whatever ratio for the stage of growth the plant is in. I change out my res every 2 weeks in veg, and every week in flower. Sometimes I skip a week, no big deal. I add nutrients in this order: Armor Si, CaliMagic, Micro, Gro, Bloom, Hydroguard

Mar 22- Mar 28 I've been adjusting up from 200ppm over the last few days cuz she was looking pale and ppm were consistently dropping day to day. I'm up to 600 since yesterday and ppm are still dropping and she's finally starting to get a nicer green on. I'm not going to mess with it for a while, seems like it's too high already. But going off how the plant looks seems like it's right where it should be. I would have never imagined going past 300-350ppm at this point.

Mar29-Apr4 Nutes are at 700ppm and pretty steady, dropping maybe 1-2 ppm every day. Temps stay around 73° on average and water around 66°ish PH is hanging out around 6.2-.3. She's drinking about 1.5quart of water each day and bushing up real nicely. Topping her allowed the side branching to catch up, GH nutes are doing their typical brown root deal but they look good and healthy. I also did some LST, tied down branches with yarn to keep the tops level and spread her out a bit.

Apr5-Apr11 Not much to say here. Blue berry is growing great Flip to 12/12 at the end of the week. She's just as hungry as ever, I've increased PPM to 1,300 all 3 of GH for bloom transition. I pruned up a lot of the lower growth topped all growth.

Apr12-Apr18 I topped at the 3rd node, then topped at the 2nd of both of the Y shoots, then topped again every single shoot on the plant. Lollipopped and tied everything down with yarn and tape to the top of the lid about 3 days before flipping. PPM 1400 Temp 70°f Water Temp 68-70°f Humidity is a bit high at 59% I'm going to have to run the fan incrementally during the night cycle humidity jumps up to 70-80 when lights are off and the fan isn't running. I have a small dehumidifier I'll put in the tent soon, to run 24hrs a day. In my experience, it didn't help too much maybe 3-4% if I was lucky but it will be in a much smaller area now so hopefully, it will do better.

Apr19 –Apr25 Well, the Blueberry is showing her first signs of budding, and she has about 28 bud sites at the top of the canopy. Temps Low 68° High 81° Humidity 45% she's drinking about 1.5 Gal of water each day and I bumped PPM up to 1600 this afternoon. Really impressed with the root development. This plant is incredibly bushy and requires a lot of pruning, I've been keeping the canopy uniform as best I can. I'm really enjoying this plant she's super hardy and recovers really fast from anything I have done to her (topping, super cropping, pruning etc.) For anyone who may be interested in how I LST my dwc plant. I use a combination of LST and supercropping. Using yarn to pull whichever branch Into position where I want it. Either taping the yarn to the top of the lid, or tying it directly to another sturdier branch in the direction I want it. Tape isn't pretty but it works. The stems are pretty stiff now, so I think I'm done training her.

Apr26-May2 I've been using Tap Water up till this point. I recently purchased an RO unit, and it's giving me 0ppm with a PH of 7.00. I did a fresh res swap today and I'm flushing with Florakleen.I've been giving her "Bloom Transition" feed. After the flush, I will switch to full bloom. Since I'm using RO now I'll start off the first couple of days at a lower PPM around 900-1,000 just to rule out the possibility that the tap water could have been causing any degree of a lockout, see how she reacts and go from there. She's also starting to smell a bit, so I hooked up the big ass carbon filter I had to get to pair with the 440CFM fan when lights came on. The plant is about 12" tall, light sits 7" above the canopy. I do NOT keep an air gap under my net pots. I don't see a reason to do this, it's just wasted space in my opinion. The only reason I would leave a space is if I were using Rockwool (which I wouldn't use) I like to have my nutrient solution overlap about an inch of the pot covering the roots that are protruding the pot.

May 3 – May 9 Still, some minor issues getting Calcium dialed in but not that big of a deal only affecting maybe 3 or 4 fan leaves. Plant is pretty much on cruise control at this point. GHE nutes always tend to dye my roots brown not a big deal they are healthy. She has pretty much stopped stretching at this point and branches are very strong to support bud weight, I highly doubt I will have to add supports.. Minor Defoliation to open up the canopy and get light to the lower bud sites. Base Nutrients are 2-1 (Micro-Bloom) Heavy feeder during the last 2 weeks of stretch Temps hanging around 68-75 Humidity 50-60% water temps 65-70 PPM back up to 1700 with 30ml of Calmag, some liquid Koolbloom, and plant booster. Will run the booster for 2 weeks then after that only add in the Koolbloom and Calmag.

May 10 – May 16 May 13 res, Was shooting for 1500 PPM but close enough. Not a whole lot to add here really, She is just on cruise control. As long as I give her what she's asking for my life is pretty easy.

Currently in day 39 of Flower Have dropped PPM down to 880 and will not add Nutrients for the remainder of the grow. 18 days left till scheduled harvest. Judging by the Trichomes it looks like it will be on schedule maybe a couple days deviation. Temperature 72°f Water Temperature 70°f So far this plant has been a breeze to grow, Canopy is 2'x2' I have done some Super cropping, LST, and a lot of topping. She has bounced back in less than 3 days after heavy stress. Stopped all training around 3 weeks into flower when the branches began to stiffen and the stretch stopped. I was going to do a res change this week, but I was finishing up my degree so I was way too busy

6/1 : Going to start flushing this plant today. She's got about 14 days left, trichs are almost entirely milky. I noticed over the last day or so she has started giving off that tell-tale skunky cannabis smell. Really love how this plant smells, I think I can place a finger on it if anyone remembers boo berry crunch cereal pretty close to that. The buds are all rock solid except of course the lower branches where the 400w HPS can't penetrate, I'll toss those in the trim for tincture or oil. I also removed some of the fan leaves from the inner canopy to get some light down to the lower buds. 6/4 : Got ahold of my lovely ladies camera today and took some nice pictures. If you're like me you can never get enough bud shots to look at.

Well there's good news, and there's bad news. First the bad, I had some bud rot. 2 tops were affected by the rot, so I chopped her down last night and trimmed everything up and tossed what I could identify as rot. I had to break 2 buds open to confirm. So I think I caught it fairy early. Good news is I was only 5 days away from my intended harvest and trichs were starting to get some amber anyway so it's not too early. I've never had to deal with rot before and I'm fairly certain it's because I didn't raise my fan to be blowing directly over the tops. I posted a picture of it, if someone here has dealt with rot can you confirm that is indeed what that is?

Really, the only thing that went wrong with this grow was two tops rotting because I didn't stay on top of my fan height. But I caught it in time and was able to harvest the majority of the plant. The two tops I estimate would have added another 12-18 grams. I will be growing this again in the future and would recommend others to as well.