First Greenhouse 2019

~UPDATED 5/2/19~ Getting back around to this week I received my cheap temporary pH meter to replace my hanna which got wrecked...damn shame...now I have a clue on pH and its not where I want it (7.41pH) so you can see I have added some micro amounts of MicrobeLife Plus-C, Xtreme Gardening Mykos wettable powder, Gaia Mania, Herculean Harvest, and Mammoth P. The reason for this "microbial-cocktail" is pretty straight forward, my pH is too high so I am adding in more bacteria to my fermenter to help boost the overall bacterial and fungal colony strength in my soils as much as possible, hopefully it will self regulate enough. Gaia Mania which has a micro amount of sugars is helping as a very mild feed of 30ml per day into the fermenter, enough to help them replicate, not enough to help them go nuts and over acidify or go alcoholic. I was also utilizing Herculean to acidify my Fermentor so that the blended water would drop pH a bit, that didn't work since I can barely add any to my RO solution without the pH going nuts, I will have to rethink this strategy this week. Outside of that most of my plants are doing great, my humidity and temps are in a very happy place currently but due to the heavy amount of water that rests on the plants from the misters I will have to also rethink that strategy. I finally did the math on my dilution from my hose that is siphoning from my fermenter, I am going in at a 25:1 ratio so the math is fairly easy to do from there. I almost forgot, as I am working on making this an organic as possible of a grow I brought in a handful red wriggler worms into each grow bag, a couple small containers of lady bugs, and praying mantis eggs. I am also going to be growing a mix or culinary herbs along side the plants to help deter any pests that may be interested, the mix will be Lavender, Catnip, Rosemary, and Dill then inside I will have Italian Basil, Thai Basil, Chocolate Peppermint, Spearmint, and Parsley. Finally in the pots themselves I will have some low cut Oregano, Thyme, and Cilantro. Hopefully this cocktail of plants is fairly pungent and keeps most of the nasty bugs and rodents away, if nothing else they will be tasty! - Chernobyl OG (TGA Chernobyl X Headband OG) All (4) are going well, COG#2 is clearly the fastest growing but all seem very healthy and with the exception of #2 which has already thrown its first leaf set out the rest are following suit and should have there first set of 3 started within a couple days. - DreamBand (Blue Dream X Headband OG) This strain is surprising me in a good way with its extreme vigor, I believe this will be my largest plant this year with ease as all (4) have taken off, DB#2 is leading, and DB#1 is slacking but even DB#1 is beating COG#1 -Girl Scout Cookies (OG Kush X Durban Poison) These are sad, GSC#1 is just looking ugly with its curled over leaves and near total lack of vigor, GSC#2 is also extremely lacking in vigor but at least doesn't look deformed...I really hope these have some FIRE nugs at the end of this slow journey. - Orange Daiquiri (Orange Daiquiri X Unknown) These girls are looking good if not a touch pale in color but I am being cautious with nutrients as they are so young and sharing their nutrient with the Wedding Cake which is showing no paleness. Progressing well but the DreamBand may end up over taking them in size sometime next week - Sundae Driver (Fruity Pebbles OG X Grape Pie) They have popped their shells off and reach the surface, they have not opened up yet but they should soon enough. These also do not seem to be extremely vigorous at this point but too early to tell. - Wedding Cake (Wedding Cake X Unknown) Healthy and almost happy, they seem to be suffering from a bit of wet feet at the moment so watering is cut back and I am letting them set up some nice roots! ~UPDATE 4/27/19~ I am starting this week a day ahead of schedule just to get myself on a better schedule. Since my last update I have gotten the Sundae Driver seeds in the ground and gotten most of the Greenhouse set up and nearly complete. I will add a plant update later this week, all in all everything is going well except the one Wedding Cake appears to have been nibbled on by something and the Girl Scout Cookies which are the obvious runts of the bunch, I am a bit disappointed by their growth so far as everything else is thriving, that said I never expected it to blow me away with massive plants but I do expect some incredible buds in the end! ~GREENHOUSE BUILD~ COOLING + HUMIDITY This last week I managed to get my 3 wall mount fans ceiling mounted to keep my greenhouse both cooler and the air in constant motion, getting these going actually dropped my peak day temps from 38+C to 32C, this was a huge improvement but not enough so I also installed 5 misters mounted on the ceiling and that has dropped my temps down to 27C. The misters are also a major help with humidity, my humidity had been down in the 20's, so a pretty brutal environment for most plants, the misters are helping to keep it closer to 50%-55% landing me in a VPD between 15-20, not quite the ideal 5-12 but a lot closer then my 40+ I was achieving earlier this week. I have also put down some cedar mulch, my hope here is 3-fold. First I want the greenhouse to not be a muddy mess with the misters as my native soil turns to hell when wet, second and more important is Cedar helps drive some pests away and the less pests the better, and finally, also most important, is I want the mulch to absorb the water from the misters and slowly release that even when the misters are not running to help maintain a better more humid environment. This last point is particularly important because the misters which are on a timer can only run 6 hours a day because of said timer, its also worth noting that they put out enough water to scare me for mold if they ran all day every day, so running them during the hottest and driest part of the day is the logical way to utilize them anyways. ~PEST + DISEASE~ So far I'm doing ok with pest and disease but I did notice what looks to be some insect bite marks on one of the Wedding Cakes, I also noticed a lot of fungus gnat and fly action around the pots, probably because I've been keeping them too saturated due to the extremely low humidity and high temps which are robbing my soil of moisture too rapidly to let them dry out too much without risking the plants health. That problem is now solved so onto the insects, I was hesitant to use much of anything on them as they are so young so I made a very simple solution of Trifecta, MicrobeLife Plus-C, and GO CaMg+. Trifecta is a unique product I have not used before but have used other versions of the same spray, essentially this type of spray is a fully organic, non-bee killing, non-ladybug harming, soft bodied insect suffocating, mold killing super spray. Trifecta is different in that it contains a hell of a beneficial oil package, just check out the picture of the label, it has tons of oils and extracts to help not only repel the pests it doesn't kill on contact but also help reduce mold spores from going airborne and spreading; if that wasn't enough it also has Isopropyl alcohol to beat back mold and bacteria, and finally citric acid and vinegar to leave an acidic environment that mold cannot grow in...So far it is the best of its type I have used, the reason I'm liking it so much is the aromatic oil package appears to have significantly reduced the amount of insects willing to hang out in my greenhouse, plus a little clove oil smell isn't the worst thing in the world. The other two in the spray, MicrobeLife Plus-C, which is used as a photosynthetic bacterial leaf inoculant is used in this solution because I wanted to make sure that if any bacteria did survive the spray, then I want it to be my bacteria. The CaMg+ is in there because I can't stand not utilizing some micronutrients in every spray if I have the choice, also my preferred Seaweed extract was not on hand at the time so I improvised. Also worth noting that 100% of my water contains a very diluted worm casting tea in solution. ~Spray Recipe~ 1gal (3.8L) worm casting water (~20:1-30:1) 2oz(60ml) Trifecta 1/2oz(15ml) MicrobeLife Plus-C 1/2tsp(2.5ml) CaMg+ One final note I have my UV-C lights up, I am not sure they will be sufficient as they were meant for a much much smaller indoor grow tent but I don't see the harm in putting them up. As a side not for anyone looking to use UV-C, do yourself a favor and get UV-C protective glasses and only enter the room while activate if you absolutely must, I make it a point to never be in the room while they are on unless I am checking them for maintenance for a total of 30 seconds. ~WATER SYSTEM~ My watering system starts with some pretty hard tap water heavy in Chloramine, I run this through (1) Carbon Block Filter rated 2gal per minute, that then going into my main hose tree inside of the greenhouse, where it is then split into (4) directions on a timer or manual setting via switch. Direction 1) goes to my misters, I really need a calcium inhibitor filter but that will come later, this runs for 6 hours in the peak heat of the day. Direction 2) goes to no where, planned for automated irrigation in the event I'm not around for an extended time. Direction 3) goes to another Carbon Block filter giving me 4gal per minute of combined 100% chloramine free water that then is fed by a Venturi siphon in the worm casting tea fermenter. Direction 4) this goes to my stealth RO system which feeds the fermenter, there is also an accessory low flow water from this incase I need small amounts of clean water. As you can see the water is barely getting softened at all, in fact the incoming water is at 0.95ec, but hopefully that will be ok in the long run because it is an organic soil system. Also I hate to see RO discharge water wasted so I have it feeding a tree outside of my greenhouse just to say I'm being more sustainable. I have also added a flow meter onto my hose to keep track of my water use to keep things accurate and consistent.