RQS~Astro lemonade

Theia Diary 1: Astro Lemonade (Royal Queen Seeds) ​Entry 1: Germination & Sowing ​Big shoutout to Royal Queen Seeds for sending this Astro Lemonade over as a gift to test drive and review. The journey starts today. ​The Start: I started by dropping the seed into a 24-hour soak using 22°C dechlorinated water. After the soak, it went straight into wet paper tissues inside a zipped plastic bag. Just 22 hours later, a healthy taproot had already broken through. ​The subsyrate: For the first home, I prepped a 100ml cup filled with BioBizz peat-free Light Mix. To give the soil a solid organic kickoff, I blended in 5ml of Startrex soil conditioner and a tiny touch of Bactrex to wake up the beneficial microbes. The sprout is now tucked in and settling. ​The Lights: Right now, it’s sitting under the Invisible Sun B60 (Samsung lm301h with added royal blue). I've got it running on a continuous 24-hour cycle at a gentle DLI of 13. Those royal blue diodes should do a great job of keeping the early growth nice, short, and stocky.

Theia Week 2: Astro Lemonade Growth & Development Astro is sitting beautifully squat under the B60. The 450nm spectrum completely caught the early windowsill stretch. I was a bit of a lazy boy and in her first few days of life I left her on the window sill as we had amazing weather. She leaned and went lanky... I was a bit worried she would topple but the blues have done the job giving her a really thick stem and incredibly tight node density. The leaf profile is wide, lush, and spreading perfectly flat. She’s massive for this 100ml cup now and raring for the transplant. Substrate & Pot Prep Prepping the 35L bulk mix tonight (30L Light Mix, 5L Perlite) along with the scaled doses of Startrex, Silicium Flash, Mycotrex, Bactrex, and Gypsum. Letting the whole lot sit for 3 to 4 days to allow the initial biological reaction and heat to level out completely before potting up. The drainage base is fully sorted too. Last run's clay pebbles have been recycled using a strict over the top clean—60°C water, a 24-hour bleach drench, 3 clean hot rinses, and a proper sun bake to clear any potential pathogens. Transplant goes down later this week once the substrate has stabilised.

Theia Astro Lemonade — Pot Change & Transplant week. ​Growth & Structure Pre-Transplant is spot on the B60’s 450nm royal blue channel did exactly what it was engineered to do. It completely took back the early stretch from being left on the windowsill forcing the stem to thicken up and the nodes to stack incredibly tight. She completely filled out the 100ml starter cup, leaves spreading wide and flat perfect for the move into the 15L forever home. ​ The transplant was executed using my pot forttess plan. I have a layered sequence to protect the roots and maximize early microbial contact: ​The Base: Laid down 2.5cm of fully sterilized, recycled clay pebbles at the bottom for solid drainage and to keep the soil out of standing water. ​The main substrate. Added a 3cm layer of the pre-mixed, stabilized substrate (30L BioBizz Light Mix + 5L Perlite, amended with bulk-scaled Startrex, Silicium Flash, Bactrex, Mycotrex, and Mouldmaster Gypsum).​Placed 3 BioTabs in a perfect triangle directly on top of this 3cm foundation. ​I covered the tabs with a 2.5cm layer of the amended soil mix. This creates a critical boundary layer, preventing the fresh root ball from resting directly against the highly concentrated nutrient tabs on day one. I Set an empty 100ml starter pot onto the buffer layer as a spacer, packed the remaining amended substrate firmly around it to fill the Autopot, and then pulled the empty cup out to leave a perfect impression,this was sprinkled with a healthy, heavy coating of Mycotrex straight into the cavity for immediate mycorrhizal contact. Slid the seedling out of her starter cup and dropped her straight into the hole. ​Burying the Stretch: Filled the remaining space up to the cotyledons, burying that early purple windowsill stem entirely underground so it can spread out into a massive network of new adventitious roots. ​Post-Transplant Left the sharp sand barrier, injection loops, and AquaValve lines completely off for the first 14 days. Hand-watering strictly from the top with plain water during this fortnight to keep the core damp and force the root system to hunt down to the bottom pebble layer. Substrate hasl been topped up with about 2 inches of sharpsand to act as a layer of bug protection. This will stay dry as I am wick feeding from the bottom and I have my feed injection lines buried about an inch below that. This is so I can inject 500ml doses of Bactrex and water during the grow. Trying to eliminate any salt build up in the top 2 CMS. Lights are running as 1 channel of lm301H Evo with 4096 diodes running at about 15%. I've also deployed 20w of a deep red and royal blue channel to act as my invisible ceiling. DRFR comes on at lights off for 15 minutes putting the girls to sleep much quicker and resetting the ps 1 and 2 photosystems. Temps are an issue as it's 37c outside. I'm managing to maintain a 27c and 65% for now . Bit high as I would rather be sitting about 0.9 in transition week. But it's okay. I'm sure there's more but I can't think right now.. Grow well growmies.. ☘️💚

Theia A rather annoying week for me this week. In fact it's going to be a bit of an annoying next 3 weeks as I have been really busy at work and had no time to gather any decent data. I've implemented my pot stratergy. There is a feeding tube system buried 1cm under the substrate and I then filled the pot with sharp sand and a thick layer of diatomaceous earth. The blue channel of 450nm along with deep red 680nm are doing a great job of holding down the vertical growth and allowing the plant to remain nice and squat and deploy her energy into lateral growth. Node space and structure are superp. I may give a second round of topping and let her have another 3 weeks of recovery and veg. It would be better for me also as I am away to Sicily for work until the beginning of August. The syringe feeding system works amazingly well. Better than I had hoped and I have already given the first Bactrex feed via the new line. The sharp sand stayed dry and in all a great success. Light levels are adequate. I'm giving 35 DLI and to achieve this my main rig is at 15% and I'm running the 2 strips of deep red and royal blue. That's about an additional 10watts. Toat draw on mains at lights on is 140w. 2 extractors a humidifier and both lights.. Light spectrum. As I said I'm hitting the plants with extra 450nm royal blue and 680nm deep red. The reason 680nm Deep Red in Veg Works is because it's a cooperative frequency in the sense of plant biology The 450nm blue suppresses vertical stretch via cryptochrome activation, but running it solo can over-constrain structure. Adding 680nm deep red re-balances the morphogenetic signal. it drives vascular development (xylem/phloem differentiation, cell wall lignification) without triggering flowering . The result should be stiffer stems that support the lateral branching architecture I'm trying to create. Plants stay squat and structurally robust. 680nm also sits at the chlorophyll-b absorption peak, so hopefully I'm allowing photosynthetic efficiency per photon. At 35 DLI with the main rig at 15%, the supplemental deep red/blue strips givesbme what I call spectral steering (different jobs for each wavelength) without brute-forcing intensity. I think it's why I'm hitting my target DLI at 140W total draw instead of cranking the main rig to 30%+. The 450/680 ratio during veg primes the plant for the transition to flower later—vascular tissue is already optimized for the heavier flowering demands in the coming weeks. I'm sure there's more but I can't think for now. I may add some bits later. Grow well.☘️💚

Theia Gone into week 1 of flower. Work has taken priority and I've been away so much that keeping updates has not been possible. Plants are doing just fine through. The Biotabs just add water system means I just have to keep a res filled with fresh water. I do also give a weekly top feed of water via a syringe and buried closed loop I installed at transplant. This allows me to reduce the risk of salt build up in the top layer of my substrate.On the 4th feed I add 2.5g of Bactrex to this water injection to maintain a healthy microbial system. I'm trying to minimise stretch with royal blue and deep red supplements. I'm worried the ratio of blue to red will confuse the plant as the spectrum should be more red at flower as it would be in nature. If I see any issues I have 80w of reds I can apply as needed. The heatwave has been an issue I've managed to keep temps around 27c and forcing humidity to about 65%.

Theia The plants have stretched like monsters. Even with an increased exposure of 450nm blues I think you can not beat nature at this level. The blues have given a really nice internode spacing during the stretch and the plants both have a lot of bud sites . With the crazy hot temps I've been running lights on at the night time to try and use the lower ambient temps. Even this is peaking at lights on around 29c. To lower my vpd from the crazy 1.6 it was on last week I've allowed rh to climb up to 67%. I've increased airflow to make sure I don't get too many micro pockets of humid hot air but at 1.32kpa the plants are flourishing. Still just getting tap water. About six litres every 2 days . Syringe feeds are still happening to stop the salt build up but I'm out of Bactrex ATM . I'll order some this week though. As it is at the moment no plants are showing any signs of stress or nutrient demand. A heavy defoliation was given to them as they are monster big plants. The Astro Lemonade being the bigger chunkier plant the NTF looks almost sativa in its shape and structure, but it is a indica dominant strain so I don't know .. I will add my reds to the schedule from day 21 of flower lower cct and Emerson .

Theia I had to do some supercroping and HST to get the height in check. Even with this it's still going to be tight. I think I have about 30cm left to play with and I can lst as I go. Still just on tap water. I've cut so much growth from the bottom and they are still bushy as hell. I don't like to take away too much leaf. I want to catch as many photons as I can. I aim for about a 15cm penetration and cut from there. I think I may feed a compost tea in the coming week. Just to top up the microbials in the substrate. The stretch has been extensive and I have seen no demand or deficiency as yet. I'm very impressed once again with Biotabs. It's so easy.. Lights are running as Reds 680/730nm- on 5 minutes before lights on as a wake up. And off 10 minutes after lights off as Emerson. Whites run at a 12/12. Dimmer is 45% and I'm giving 26 DLI of whites. Total power consumption is 396w for 12 hrs then down to 134w during lights off. Daily total: 6,360 Wh/day (6.36 kWh) Weekly: 6.36 kWh × 7 = 44.52 kWh/week This will go up if the weather continues to cook and I need to implement heating. But such is life . Main observations this week is the total lack of any fungus gnats. I'm sure a few get in as I have some light leaf damage but as there is no access to the substrate thanks to the inch of sharp sand and dimacecous earth so the breeding cycle can not continue past the adult stage. The feeding rings I buried seem to be working well. Well they are working exactly as designed but without a base to test alongside I don't know if the results are improved or not. I do however "feel" it is doing some good and the science of salt build up in the top inch of a wick feeding systems are plain to see. Based on this and how littlteffort it is I shall continue my weekly injections. Still giving Bactrex once a month. I'm not going to run uvb this run . It is not installed and with the size of the plants I would not get a good height for even distributed coverage. I would burn the center line of buds and leaf. It's not pretty when you destroy all the cells in a living thing..😔 I'm keeping a close eye for any signs of demand as flowering is in full swing. I'm not driving as hard as I normally do and I'm planning to just run them in a safe happy zone. No need for monster yield chasing. If I'm good to these two I'm sure the rewards will be worthwhile. I'm running around 24c and 58% during lights on. Aim is a vod of 1.1 to 1.2. I want to keep it nice and gentle and allow things to happen in the happy zone. I think this stratergy will give me more reward then the cost of a few extra dli..