Third Grow!

7/28/19 --Super happy to see the plants doing this well. Ive found that every other day feeding is the best for these specific plants. Im a big proponent of only watering the plant when it signals it is ready for watering. The least possible amount of induced stress for these plants is the goal for me. Cheese seemed to be totally unaware of the FIM that was done on it, as it showed not even 1 sign of stress post FIM. Cream cookies is another story, she's quite sensitive to absolutely everything--including watering. I am super happy to see that the last fan leave on the 5th node has 9 leaves--a really good sign that the plant is doing extremely well. The more leave nodes on each leave the healthier than plant. There are zero signs of nutrient burn at all. It was difficult at first to see if the slight bending of the leaves was due to nutrient burn, but I later figured out that the leaves were pressing against the side of their pot and as a result bending--wasnt nutrient burn. Ive been varying the pH widely each week--with the attempt to be as random as possible. I want to make as many nutrients available to the plant as absolutely possible. I really am loving the Advanced Nutrients Sensi line. Im growing in coco but I bought the nutrient mix not designed for coco with the understanding there might be some potassium issues down the road. But otherwise as a chemist by profession, when I heard about the pH perfect line I was rightly skeptical. It will balance your solution to the correct pH range (5.6-6) IF you start with dead neutral pH 7.00±0.05 water with no dissolved salts (distilled water). the distilled water I've been buying (from Walmart) clocks in on the pH meter at around 7.6-8.6 which will cause the pH perfect technology to neutralize some of the dissolved ionic species and bring the pH well below safe range for cannabis. Ive found that if you pH the distilled water to 7.00--add your Ca/Mg/Fe, THEN add the pH perfect technology the range will be much more suitable. It was kind of annoying since my pH down is so much more concentrated than my pH up. Me problems I know but still annoying. --One of my amazing collages at work is going to water both babies today with Week 4 nutrient solution even though we are technically in week 5. My vacation has prevented me from mixing the solution to feed. --This vacation has brought so many new automation ideas to coco coir growing. Ive been developing a hypothesis that involves what I call the "level of droop age" and its correlation to plant thirst. It began when I was growing in soil and needed a better way of telling when to feed the plants instead of a fixed schedule, which seemed to be giving way too much water to the plants. ---Ive developed a "droop scale" which can be directly correlated to plant thirst. Ive also found that very happy plants that do not want water will go through a natural droop cycle as night approaches. I take this as the plants time to grow out its root system (happens at night). By the morning the leaves are pointing up in what I call "leaves up loving life" ---So the scale I've developed is kind of arbitrary but it does a really good job imo if you become very familiar with your plants. ---The scale ranges from -10 (the most droop in the leaves every observed) to +10 (the most extreme leaves up loving life ever observed). the scale is out of 10 not 20. ---lets say that you watered your plants today, and their leaves were at a -7/10 droop (what when I water my plants). If you water them you should observe no increase in droop--in other words after watering the droop should only improve not regress. If the droop increases after watering your plants wanted a little more time before their feed--so alter your droop scale until you find the level of droop that when feed causes only an increase in the droop. 6 hours after watering you plant droop should be >+1/10. The next day you should see your plants at least at +5/10 droop. ---Merging this scale with automation is going to be difficult as ill have to use an open source machine learning AI to learn when the plants droop is sufficient enough to justify a watering. I hope to set up the system to be automated or manually operated over the cloud. ---Using a Raspberry pi and an Arduino as well as a whole set of motor control boards and sensor boards I hope to put together an integrated system that can detect when the leave droop reaches critical levels using a camera, and feed accordingly. Ive been all over the internet and all automated grow projects rely on soil moisture sensors which only penetrate <4 inches into the substrate. This doesn't cut it for me as the root ball of the plant is way below that 4 inches of the sensor, yielding readings which only pertain to the top layer of soil, which just so happens to dry out the fastest. ---Im going to keep my grows at 2 plants each from no on--and I plan to make an automated system for both plants which can control watering to both plants individually. Im currently trying to figure out the best way to track volume of water dispensed. A flow meter with a know diameter tubing and a known diaphragm pump rate seems to introduce all sorts of inaccuracies into the mix. I think im going to design an automated measuring system that uses an ultrasonic distance sensor coupled with a camera and AI to fill up a the hopper to the desired volume of nutrient solution. ---I have all the hardware listed but im a complete dumbass when it comes to coding. My profession is chemistry, coding goes right over my head. I have an immense respect for coders as I honestly have no idea how you guys do it. Its like learning 15 different languages at once and using them all together. Blows my the ability of our society. The wide range of skills. Love it. ---If anybody would like to help me code this project it would be greatly appreciated. 7/30/19 -Cream Cookies is doing extremely well. FIM was a great idea. 4 new main cola sites came out of the FIM which im very happy about. The undergrowth also has caught up to the canopy. the canopy has a plethora of bud sites. Defoliation done to increase light to bottom branches. Largest fan leaves towards the canopy removed. FIM'ed leaves that opened up also trimmed, allowing more light to penetrate to those small bud sites. --Ive counted sites where main colas can form. Very happy with this HST I decided to do. --LST done and branches separated from each other so they can receive ample light. Thinking of adding supplementary 40W flowering bulbs for flowering. -Cheese FIM didn't work as intended but it did break the symmetry of the plant. One of the first branches has grown higher than the canopy and I had to tie it down using LST. Did some defoliation and going to do some LST later. --Some light stress spots on Cheese, makes sense since I wasn't physically at my apartment to raise the lamp. Before raising the lamp the plants were 14 inches from the light which is way too close. The closest it should be is 17 inches. Raised the lamp to 18 inches and spots are subsiding. --Being overly cautious ive increased the dose of Ca/Mg/Fe to 4 mL/gal incase spots are actually a Ca/Mg/Fe deficiency from explosive growth. 7/31/19 -Cream Cookies is showing beautiful pre flowers. Still recovering from light stress. Looks very similar to nutrient burn but only present in tip most growth suggesting light burn. 14 inches was way too close-vacation problems lmfao -defoliation done on both cheese and cream cookies to expose bud sites -LST done on both cheese and cream cookies to bring bud sites into the light -both plants fed 400 mL Week 5 nutrient solution-when I mix next weeks nutrient solution im going to reduce the concentration to 12mL/gal w/ 3mL/gal Ca/Mg/Fe. --I want to precent any nutrient burn plus plants are slightly stressed from defoliation and light burn from my vacation. -lamp raised to 19 inches to help aid in stress relief -plants are responding in a weird way to the watering. Not in a bad way-but in a different way--larger lower leaves are not drooping like in the past its just the much newer growth is drooping. Makes sense since newer growth has less developed support system. Makes me feel much better about my watering schedule. --Clawing which I suspected was due to light stress is getting better-especially after a feeding. 8/1/19 --Calcium deficiency just barely showing on midlevel fan leaves. Good thing calcium is a mobile nutrient. Going to readjust the nutrient solution ph to be 6.2-6.3. Been accidentally locking out calcium. --Defoliation done on both plants to expose more bud sites and to thin out the thick canopy so light can penetrate below. The hope is to defoliate correctly. If done right I won't have to lollipop. --Cheese has no preflowers yet--still in veg --Cream cookies looks like it started flowering. 2 preflowers were spotted earlier in the week. Surprised to see how fast the plant moved into flowering. Going to be feeding it with flower nutrients starting week 6. --Going to continue feeding cheese with veg solution until preflowers are observed.