1st Grow Ever, Coco, 6 Autos, 6 Strains

Current Feeding In addition to the above listed Micro, Grow, and Bloom, ML per gallon I add: 2.5 FloraMicro 2.5 FloraGrow 1.25 FloraBloom 2.5 CaliMagic (EDIT: Increased to full recommended dosage to avoid further Cal issues) 0.5 Armor SI 0.5 Floralicious 2.5 FloraBlend 2.5 SM-90 0.5 Roots Excelerator 0.5 Drip Clean 3 Photosynthesis Plus 2.5 Xnutrients Ful-Potential I have switched to white vinegar for PHing down. So far, so good. I will update the PPMs at next feeding as I forgot it from last time, lol. But they were in the safe range. I take them with just the Calimagic, Armor SI, and Micro, Grow, Bloom trio. I would prefer to get the PPM for just the trio, but GH advises to add the CaliMag and Armor SI prior to the trio. I also get the PPM with the additives, and was surprised at how little PPM they actually add. EDIT: ppms Base Tap Water ppm: 199 EC: 0.398 Trio Nutes, CaliMagic, and Armor SI ppm: 616 EC:1.232 Full Nute and Additive ppm: 740 EC: 1.48 Unadjusted PH 7.4 White vinegar adjusted to 5.81, approx 67ml for approx 8 gallons water. After an hour PH settled at 5.9 and I am ok with that. And there are the gory details of my late veg feeding. 7/28/17 All have been sexed, and it is good news (I assumed that ALL Autos would be females but wasn't sure). The stretch is on. The time lapse I posted last week includes up to today. You can see them really fill out the last 3 days. I had to raise the LEDs the last 3 nights. Considering feeding again tomorrow or Sunday. Most likely Sunday, but I am curious if I can push a little extra growth out of them before the real stuff starts. They are not as big as I would like, but the short internodes are very encouraging. My electric bill came in. Almost double last year. The AC doesn't shut off in this heat, nor does it reach the temperature that I set it at. It really can't. Fall photo crop will be much cheaper. Turned off the humidifier but I realized that the fabric pots and volume of wet coco makes it more humid than I realized. I might have to once again spend some money and grab a dehumidifier. The temps will be going up soon, according to the VPD chart, when they go into full flower, so it will not only be slightly cheaper on my power bill, but the humidity will naturally go down as the temps go up, making this a little early speculation. Still, I will need to find the sweet spot as far as temp and humidity to automate my settings. Right now , the in room AC by the tent is set to 68 and the houses central AC is set to 70. It doesn't get below 76 on a hot day in the main area. If you have watched the time lapse video, you have seem my thermometer. I can look at live video of the garden during lights on, at anytime, from anywhere. Today, I went to check it and I couldn't see it because of growth. It is on last weeks time lapse. You will notice it moves to the forefront. I like that kind of surprise! 7/29/17 I started to LST Speed Bud #2 and #3 with the intention of doing everything, but I chickened out after those 2. They are all just so happy, and I don't want to mess it up AND I want to see what it naturally looks like. I know my yield will further suffer, but this is school as far as I am concerned. The money I spent tuition. Right now I am pondering the following for my next grow, my photo grow. It will be a Sativa load. Anyone with any experience growing any of these strains, please offer me as much advice as you can stand to give. I know they can be hard to handle, so I want to go in with a sound strategy before sowing. 4 Durban Poison, 2 Amnesia Haze, and 2 Gypsy Haze I considered Neville's Haze, but if I can't LST an Autoflower, I don't think I am ready for something that takes like 4 months and must be controlled by 10 or 11 hours on light cycle for flower, flowering at 8 inches of height, and growing it in a dixie cup. Then it will only get 45 feet tall. Obviously I am exaggerating a bit, but read some grow diaries of people with good intentions, nice nice setups, and strong desire to grow this plant only to have the plant overcome them and run out of control at at which point most journals end with a final post from the OP saying something like "wow, this thing is growing fast" or "how much more can it grow?" The other sativas sound much more manageable for someone of my limited experience. Provided this current grow is successful, I will have plenty of Indica, so all sativa sounds reasonable since I am primarily growing period because of Durban Poison. Still a long way to go until this first grow is completed. I am definitely going to feed them tomorrow. Will likely hit them a bit harder with the CaliMagic. Minimum 20 ml per 8 gallons. I think I did myself a disservice getting the Hardwater Micro. At around 150-225 variance ppm, my water is not that hard. I need to ask my water district the calcium content of the water. Everything I read about calcium deficiency in coco tells me to go hard with CaliMagic. My 1st hand experience backs up the need. When it hit, it hit HARD. One of the perceived disadvantages of growing so many strains at the same time is the individual attention many strains need and differences in grow cycle. I might counter that my more sensitive strains (I am looking at you, KUSH), might be a REALLY good early indicator to protect the entire crop; a canary in the coal mine to conditions that would hurt the entire crop if left unchecked. We will of course wait for my yield to determine if my theory is correct, but it works for me right now. Let the facts guide 7/30/17 Doing feeding I decided instead of a water flush which I was apprehensive about, I would do a detailed ppm test in runoff. If its anywhere to about 900 ppm (200 or so higher than I put in) is fine, anything higher gets more feed until runoff is where expected. Of my first 5, runoff was normal in 3 of the 5 (Seemango, Auto Speed Bud #3, and NLxBB). Speed bud #2 was over 1000 ppm, so it got additional feed until 900's. Now here is where it gets odd. The first traces of runoff was in the 500s, BELOW what I was putting in, in Auto Speed Bud #1, the largest plant by far.. It ended up stable in the 900s as expected with a PH of 6.31, but how on earth could the ppm LOWER immediately? Coco is cool stuff. Mixing up the next 8 gallons of nutes for the other ladies. All the other plants runoff was normal. The Kush is my sensitive plant, shows me things before the rest do. She REALLY enjoyed todays feeding, She is sticking straight up. I have never seen joy from a plant before, but I think I just might have. Also, the humidity in my house and the tent spiked during feeding. 70% in my house and 81 in the tent. I am definitely going to need to get a dehumidifier and soon by the time the flowers show up. I didn't realize the added heat and humidity of a canopy. The old learning curve. Well, I added a fan to the far end of the tent for more breeze in a thick canopy from the other end and cooling and it will be seen on the time lapse from now on. It was too powerful even on slow speed to aim directly at the plants, so comically I have it oscillating off of walls and such for air turbulence. The plants LOVE the feeding. It is very obvious. The humidity is ridiculous tho. And it takes me over 2 hours to feed them, what with mixing, letting things stabilize after PHing, feeding, testing, and vacuuming runoff. I may adopt an every other day feeding schedule, and only do 5 at a time. I can only mix 8 gallons of nutes at a time, and with generous runoff, those 8 gallons are pretty much perfect for 5 plants. So, if I stagger and do 5 a day, it theoretically should help with the humidity and spread some of the labor out a bit and take advantage of the hydroponic benefit of coco. It should actually take less time than it would if I did all 10. I might skip a day and feed 5 of them on Tuesday and the other 5 wednesday and see how that goes. I love how this site randomly adjusts my nute levels to ridiculous amounts. If you see me adding 2400 ml of grow during flower, just know the site is continuing to randomly change my values. But don't worry people, I have strength of character. I will NOT lose my values, or let my values slide. On principle. Ok, this is getting as silly as some of the nutrient levels it says I am providing. I will long form my nutrients in the journal text per week from now on. The side of one of the fabric pots cleanly separated from a moist chunk of coco, so I took the opportunity to check if maybe i could see a root or 2 coming out of the coco. :D It looked like a white bristled brush. The roots are all over and air pruned to the walls of the 7 gallon pot. I guess between their reaction to feeding this morning and this newly discovered evidence of vigorous root growth (my gamble may have paid off), this mark the official end of wet/dry cycling these plants and the start of a more saturated future. 7/31/17 I have raised the lights up twice in the last 24 hours. i may try to push them and do a full strength feeding and see if i can push her a little, or i might chicken out. They eat at lights on tomorrow, well, 5 of them, to start the new feeding rotation of every other day. I have to think about this. I know I haven't come close to burning them and don't want to start now, but I don't want them to go hungry, either. Any thoughts on this? On the down side, I went outside and said to myself "hey, someone around here is growing weed." i went to my exhaust and could detect a smell. To make sure, I burned some sage in the tent, made sure not to smell it burning, sealed the tent, and went to the exhaust only to heavily smell sage. Lesson learned, don't buy a carbon filter off E-bay. so thats $100 I wasn't planning to spend. And if I need a dehumidifier... blah 8/1/17 There are a couple chunks missing from a couple leaves. Pic posted. Any ideas what might be eating my plant? I apparently can't post more on this week. Sorry. Limits