Outdoor Deep Water Culture

Everything sprouted nice and quickly and the Bruce Banner seedlings, lived up to their name!

The first 2 weeks I've kept them indoors under a couple of 85w CFLs. Nice and cosy!

This week they got transplanted into their deep water culture buckets. Home made units using 50 litre dustbins with 10 litre net pots, and a single pump in each one.

Their first week in their new DWC pots and fully outdoors on the roof terrace and they're loving it.

Really coming along strongly this week, starting to bush nicely and some huge leaves added.

I missed taking a pic this week of the full group and could only find this one. I topped them all though, so only 10cms growth.

The Purple Orange CBD and Bruce Banner have all been topped twice now. The Charlotte's Angel CBD is lagging behind a bit size-wise though so I haven't topped that, but it's still a really healthy looking plant. I've installed a cargo net as a SCROG net. Although they're outdoors I need to keep their height below the windshield I've built, so this is a way of keeping them trained and down.

I've been pushing the higher shoots wider and wider across the net the last week and the Bruce Banner and Purple Orange CBD also got topped a second time and have responded really well. We've had some hotter weather the last few days and these ladies are proving to be very thirsty. Hauling water onto the roof is going to be a mission once we hit full Summer heat and they've doubled in size

I've been training the tops back under the net almost every day the week, so although there's no overall gain in height they have bushed out like crazy and the big 3 are now 1.25 metres wide. The front left Purple Orange CBD is starting to show some flowering

Still going strong they are starting to show signs of early flowering, pistols increasing and internodal length shortening. I’ll give them another undercut this week to reduce the leafs and branches underneath that don’t get any sunlight. The scrog net has worked a treat to keep the tops low and encourage side beaches to push up to the top as well. I’ll add a second net in a couple of weeks for further support.

Another great week of growth and further bud development. The first Purple Orange is about 2 weeks into flower now and the Bruce Banner and second Purple Orange are a week in now. The Charlotte's Angel is still to get going.

So, I heavily defoliated the front left Purple Orange CBD this week and already it's responding nicely. I'm going to leave the second Purple Orange CBD and Bruce Banner another week or so before I do the same as they are only about 1-2 weeks into flowers so far. They've stayed very thirsty this week, the larger 3 consuming about 15 litres per day. I refill each tank completely every other day with 30 litres of full strength nutes. One book I read suggested I only had to nute them once a week on the schedule, and then in between I simply topped up with water, because as they drink the nutes concentrate in the remaining water, but so far they only get full strength nutes every time I fill. Although I do a full flush every 2 weeks. I really need to get an EC meter, but it's beyond budget at the moment.

still pushing on with some height gain and buds continuing to thicken. The weather has been cooler and a lot windier so they've taken a pummelling from that but they've survived. The smaller Charlotte's angel CBD is showing signs of nitrogen deficiency. I think this is because I've been feeding it the same schedule as the others, but it hasn't started flowing yet. Lazy of me I know but they take up a lot of time already. I'll have to flip back to a growth mix for a week or so.

This week has been hard work. First off the Charlottes Angel CBD died very abruptly. Solution temps got very high and I’m pretty sure it got root rot. I’ve been putting 2 liter soda bottles with frozen water in them into the reservoirs every day now to try and lower temps. It seems to be helping. After a hot start to the week and refilling reservoirs every day, we’ve then had a few cooler days as on the hotter ones they are damn thirsty plants.

So it’s been 3 weeks since I updated this as I was away for 2 weeks on holiday and only got back Tuesday. A lot happened in that time and many people will have differing opinions about causes but I’d appreciate all input. I had someone coming in every day to water them for me and I left premixed tanks of solution for the entire time. That might have been the first problem but in addition to that, temps got high into the 30s for a solid 2 weeks. So solution temps went very high and air temps and sunlight hitting the leaves were very high as well. Unfortunately, the Purple Orange CBD on the right that was about 3 weeks from harvest died in about 48 hours. Luckily the other Purple Orange CBD was just about done and I harvested that and saved most of it. The Bruce Banner lived up to its name and survived as a strong one and is now under shade. So I hope it will go the full distance and maybe daytime temps will start coming down now. I’ll report on the harvest once it’s dried and cured. I'm pretty gutted about the lost plant, the early forced harvest of the second one and how this diary has gone from a triumph to trash quite so quickly, but I have learnt a lot along the way and I've got some pretty decent bud still to look forward to, so all is not lost :)

The shade netting seemed to do the trick this week offering some much needed protection and then thankfully the temps have fallen as well. I've noticed the stalk on this one has a very dark patterning on it. I'm not sure if this is just the strain or whether its a sign of something I should be worried about? I'm still waiting for the Purple Orange CBD to finish drying. I reckon it'll yield about 500g of dry bud but I'll see.

It’s been an epic journey. My first big grow and my first hydroponic as well.....and outdoors with all the complications and pitfalls I had no idea about in advance. The biggest challenge was watering them in the hot weather, carrying so much water up to my roof terrace every day. But watching these plants grow into such huge happy plants for the most part has been very rewarding. I’ll definitely introduce some solution cooling equipment next time and be more attentive to high temps. But a half kilo per plant I’m pretty happy with that.

This lady is finally ready for harvest. Temps have been crazy fluctuating from rain and 22 daytime to 35 yesterday. She’s taking some punishment and showing signs of heat stress. Weirdly even on hot days she drinking a lot less now only about 5 liters per day. Ive no idea why but I can see increasing numbers of leaves yellowing turning brown and going dry and crispy. But the buds are done and so she’ll be harvested this weekend. Im excited to see what I get as although the buds aren’t huge there are quite a few tops and they’re reasonably dense.

As with the other plants in this outdoor DWC experience, as it got towards the end and temps got high it definitely tailed off in growth and bud production. The 300+ grams yield in the end was ok but a little disappointing given the size of the plant and it's initial high growth rate. But the bud is dark and dense and has a powerful hit to it!