Hyperion F1 - Shallow Water Culture

crackpothead I'm late to the game because I thought this grow would be a test run and I'd report the next one instead, but things are better than expected so I thought I'd report in. I started from seed (wet paper towel method) and put directly into a rooting plug, into a net cup with clay balls and into my shallow water culture (SWC) set up. It's a 6 liter black container with lid. I've made five holes in the lid (which I reinforced with a cutting board) and covered it in mylar (not perfect as the reflective coating dissolves when in contact with nutrient solutions and light). I covered four of the holes in this grow as they are not needed. I'm using two air pumps (one cheap USB AliExpress, and one Amazon ultra quiet) and a usb water pump. Once she pushed through the grow plug and found the water, she grew very quickly. The first week the water was PH 5.8 (I am very careful with PH and make sure I'm around the 6 mark. Past experience has taught me it's the easiest way to screw up a hydro grow) and I gave the full recommended root booster dosage and just a taste of the other nutrients. Once I saw roots reaching outside of the cup, I switched up to full nutrients. The subsequent weeks she grew vigorously and I needed to trim fan leaves nearly every other day-- they were huge. In wk 2 I topped her, and then again 4 days later and defoliated. She needed a day to recover and then was right back growing like crazy. Week 3 she started to show signs of flowering so I switched the nutrients to pre bloom and then bloom. Two days ago I gave her a major defoliation again! I cut away all the inside stuff that wasn't getting light and a lot of the under growth too. From looking like a solid mass, after the defoliation, you could see light through the other side. I can't see light through the other side now. She has grow about 15-20 cm in the past 2 weeks and will hopefully stop growing because I'm running out of space. At present most of the buds have direct exposure to the light (18/6) and she is really healthy and robust. My main concern is humidity levels, but past grows in the cabinet had high humidity levels and were really good so... She is drinking over a liter a day which is surprising (and probably explains the high humidity). No smell yet. I have two homemade activated carbon filters in the set up (one using an ice cream box and laptop fan and the other using a mesh pencil holder and a computer fan and fine mesh resin bags filled with charcoal.) I haven't had much if any smell in the past but I think that was due to underfeeding past grows so they never reached full potential; I have a feeling this guy is going to smell so I'll find out if they really work. If they don't, I will probably need to scrap the grow as I need to be super stealth. N.B. The nutrient values above are incorrect. I follow the recommended dosage on the TriPart chart

crackpothead I needed to yet again trim leaves and inner buds. The inside of the plant is hollow (devoid of budlets and leaves) now and I tried to give each bud some direct light. I think it is a combination of the SWC -- where I'm able to deliver nutrients with some precision in a highly oxygenated environment -- and the F1 genetics but this plant is really chugging along and doesn't seem to mind a vigorous trim. I gave her a two day flush at the end of week 5 with ph balanced water because I was afraid of chemical and salts build up in the reservoir. I figured she could handle it since she was growing so vigorously. I had an issue midweek where the ph dropped to 5.3 but it's back up to 6 now. There was some wilt to the leaves and a few showed yellowing. She is drinking about 1-1.5 liters a day. Now I want her to just concentrate on bud growth and tumescence.

crackpothead Not much to report other than she is chugging along and the flowers are bulking up. So far no smell but I'm expecting the first whiff in a week or two.

crackpothead She is doing what she is supposed to, though I feel like she's going a bit fast. Compared to the other Hyperion F1 diaries, I feel like she is a week or two ahead of most of the other grows. I got tired of filling the container every day with 1.5-2l of solution so I set up an outside automated reservoir that's easier to fill and holds 8l. The top buds' leaves are yellowing: I don't know if that is nutrient related, ph or just the little lady 'getting on in years'. The trichomes are clear. Only the slightest scent so far.

crackpothead Well that went south real fast. As mentioned in wk8 I had noticed some top leaves yellowing and thought it was because it was too hot inside the growzone so I lowered the temp and the next day there were twice as many yellow leaves. I checked the ph -- still good at 6. I looked for air bubbles -- a few but not many-- so I thought that was the problem and threw in another airstone and air pump, thinking the other two air stones were choked by the roots. The next day it was even worse. The buds felt moist and soft-- not because they were moldy (yet), but because transpiration had stopped: the plant was dying. I unplugged all the air pumps and water pump and took the plant out of the growzone for a closer inspection. (see the picture above). This guy was done. I decided to call it before it got moldy. The trichomes are mixed with predominantly clear to cloudy and some orange heads; not what I wanted but ... what are you gonna do? I took a nugget and oven dried it and it's quite pleasant. The rest is in the attic where it will dry-- I am worried about mold so I'll err on the side of too warm for a quicker dry in lieu of the more conservative slow dry. I looked at the roots and they looked good-- initially. The root ball was white and healthy until I got near the net cup where things started to get a little mushy. No smell but something was beginning to infest the roots. When I cut the main stem root open (see the pic) I could see the nascent rot. I think/I hope I chopped it in time. It may have been too congested in the container so next time I think I will try fredd's method of filling the container with leca balls to hold more oxygen. I was hoping for another two weeks for some bud fattening but even so it's not a bad harvest. I'll report back with a dry weight. This plant grew like crazy for 8 weeks so just some fine tuning on the end game and I'll be good to go again. .