Today is day 23 of flower. So I've been chasing a minor P-K deficiency. The plants are happy and healthy and are just feeding heavy at the moment. Well over and above any recommended servings with respect to the dry amendments and water soluble P-K inputs. As with any grow regardless of what you're using for inputs (organic amendments/salt based bottle feeding/crop salts/etc....) the recommended feed rates are never anything more than a baseline. So to remedy the deficiency I added the Flower 2 at 1.5 times the reccomended dosage (3 grams per liter of water) and a little over twice the dosage of Gaia Green 2-8-4 Power Bloom dry amendments (250ml per 7 gallon pot). I also fed a mung bean/barley seed sprout tea as well as a compost tea (2/3 of a cup of each seed). The feed rates will stay well above recommended servings for the Flower 2 but the 250ml addition of the 2-8-4 would be considered a large addition for a single serving so I will give the plants 5-7 days to see how they react to dry amendments before top amending again at any rate (you cant burn your plants with organic inputs but you can still suffer nutrient lockout so you need to be mindful and patient when feeding heavy.)
On day 19 of flower I did a large pruning/defoliation/lollipopping of the plants. Both from the top of the pot to the bottom of the first layer of trellis removing everything. I also cleaned the plants out from above the first layer of trellis netting to the top of the plant. As I waited to clean up the bottom third of the plants until my typical strip day in flower (day 18-21 depending on strain and flowering times, these are 9 week strains which is why the strip falls in the day 18-21 range, if they were 8 week finishers the leaf strip would take place somewhere between days 14-16). When running multiple layers of trellis netting it's best to prune/lollipop everything below the first layer of netting about 7-10 days before the flip. Odds are your lights wont penetrate that far down the plant so these areas of the plant typically only produce what's commonly known as larf. I'm running new lights so I decided I'd wait until the big strip I always do in flower. This was grower error. I know better and wont make this mistake again. Its unnecessary stress added during flower that could've been prevented. As I decided to wait to clean out the bottoms I didnt prune the plants as aggressively as I normally would (I adopted Grand Master Levels leaf strip practices years ago, check him out on IG or YouTube if you want to see what that looks like).
The week went smoothly with no major issues to report. The seasons are changing here so were getting rain, damp wet snow, and have very humid conditions outside. As a result this affects the atmosphere in my grow room but not enough to cause concern.
A little less than 6 weeks until the chop!
@CRiSPrGrow, no I'm not measuring VPD. For seedlings and clones I run 24 hrs on for the lights at 60%-65% and 28 celcius. Veg I run 18/6 at 50%-55% and 28-29 celcius for lights on/26-27 celcius for lights off. First week of flower I run 25-26 lights on at 50%-55%. After first week of flower I try to stay in the 45%-50%. Last two weeks of flower I bring my hum down as close to 40% as possible. I dont bring down temps for late flower.
@Horticulturehobbyists,add the flowering week numbers to the veg week so instead of "flowering week 1" say "week 12 (flowering) " that should fix it, there's an edit button for the week where it should be easy to do... anyway wasnt dropping by about that lol , loving the sprouts tea... by the way are you measuring VPD too ?
Love the details. I’ll ask the question in this week, but I’m really thinking in the end of the vegetative state, for a light mix of various amendment and soil how long does a plant take to use up the nutrients? The rate at which a plant can access amendment compared to liquid plant food is clear, but I’m still not clear on how long it would take a plant to use up the mixed in food in a large final pot. Lets say I’m generally mixing 3 parts soil to 1 part various amendment in a final pot, am I looking at approx. 1-2 weeks of food, or a month’s worth of food? Any insights are appreciated.
Thanks Horticulturehobbyists, I’m learning alot in a short time with this journal.
@@BeanswithPork, it's hard to say exactly but from the time you top ammend the pots until the time the ecosystem you've built in the pot makes that food available to the plants is in that 7-10 day range. You feed the pot and the pot feeds the plant.
The red striping is something we've seen and we do a lot of Kush. Have generally gone with a touch of CalMag and time... but hard to say 'cause they always turn out :) This is a seriously crazy grow you've got.