First Grow - Blue Dream Fem in Hydro

This week, all 8 plants have 3 nodes with 4th almost out completely. In a few days, I will top them to begin the scrogging. I have a 4x8 tent with 2 1000w lights in air cooled hoods. The growing medium is hydroton in a General Hydroponics Waterfarm 8 bucket drip/DWC system with external reservoir and RO water. I have been having a hard time with temperature, so I made several modifications this week. I added a 6 inch intake duct with a fan which pulls cooler air from another part of the basement. I hooked the outlet of my 800 cfm fan to a duct that goes to a register in a spare second floor bedroom which gets HOT. I am still at 82-86 and some leaves began to curl, so I raised the lights up to 36 inches above the plants. I will be adding insulation to the exhaust ducts tomorrow. Thankfully, cooler weather is on the way, so I am hoping it becomes less of an issue. I have a small, cool-mist humidifier that does absolutely nothing for the humidity which does not get above 40%. I have a camera inside the tent recording 24/7 (don't worry, night vision is off) which I will use to make a time-lapse. I will try to make a time-lapse each week to add to this diary!

This week saw some rapid growth. I have been struggling with low humidity despite having a small ultrasonic humidifier which did absolutely nothing. The low humidity visibly hurt one of the plants. New leaves were twisted, necrotic, and stunted. After some research, I determined it was most likely a rare boron deficiency brought on by low humidity. To correct it, I made a swamp cooler from a 5 gallon bucket and an evaporative cooling pad. It brought temps down from 80 to 77 and humidity up from 40 to 55. I also brought down the water's pH level to 6.0 which was naturally hovering around 6.3. The pH below 6.2 helps boron uptake. The next new growth was perfect. No more issues. I also topped at the end of week 1 and began LST training this week. Two of the plants had stiff branches which broke away from the main stalk when i tried to hold them down with a wire. One recovered when I held it back up in place. The other one did not and had to be removed. It was the biggest plant anyway, so I was not too concerned.

Yikes! Day 1 began with a power outage overnight. It lasted 8 hours during the middle of the light cycle. I was up most of the night worrying since they are in DWC. At 3 am, after 3 hours without my air pump, I fired up my 4000w generator which is hooked up to the house breaker box and got power to my air pump and fans. It got a little cold, so next time I will put my heater on that circuit as well. Everything got along just fine. I topped all 4 colas on all 8 plants today. This is the second and final topping. Late this week, I think I got my environment under control, so I had to screw it all up and rearrange it to seal it and add some co2. Plus, I was dying to know what my ambient co2 level was. Turns out, my ambient co2 is around 775ppm. I picked up a 20lb tank, regulator, co2 controller, and a co2 rain air hose. I ran it overnight at 1400ppm. The temperature was good at 85, but the humidity was out of control at 80%! I shut it off and ordered a dehumidifier and temp/humidity controller. Man, I am invested so heavily into this system. Go big or go home, I say. The co2 will go back on today (day 6 of week 3). The 4 plants on one side were approaching the 8 inch height, so it was time to put up a screen. The other side has the two late starters, and I have a tall heater right now, so I have not put the screen up on that side, yet. Hopefully, they will all be ready to start flowering in the next 7-10 days!

This week, the left side was ready to flower. They lifted the screen by about 5 inches, so I moved it up a bit to let the right side catch up. I ended up switching to 12/12 on day 5 fearing an unruly screen. The environment has been well-controlled for CO2 this week, so I ran that the entire week. I also removed quite a bit of lower growth and many fan leaves blocking screen holes. The plants completely filled in within a day after removing the pile of leaves in the picture which was everything I removed from all 8 plants. This is my second light defoliation. I have noticed no slowed growth with recovery seemingly instant, and the canopy fills up with new shoots where the fan leaves were removed. I will defoliate more heavily in week 3 of flower.

So much water usage this week! They started the week consuming about 5 gallons per day between the 8 plants. By day 4, they were consuming 10 gallons per day. That consumption caused my exhaust fan to run constantly to keep the humidity down. It nearly drained my tank of CO2, so I shut it off and set it to maintain 77 degrees and 55% RH. I came to the conclusion that I can only use CO2 in veg since it would seem to require some intense dehumidifying in room after they reach flowering size, and I only have enough room to fit a 30 pint which runs constantly and does not keep the humidity down on its own. The big left side plants are growing like crazy, and I am running out of squares in the screen. I had to start some additional training on branches to even out the canopy. Other than that, no problems. So far, so good! Some people have commented on crowding and airflow. Thanks for the input, everyone! Just to add some details about my airflow, I have 4 of the 6" oscillating clip fans. Two above and two below the canopy. There is a dehumidifier running constantly in the middle of the tent that is constantly blasting out warm air. There is an 800 cfm fan/filter recirculating air inside the tent. The 350 cfm Cloudline Infinity S6 exhaust fan runs frequently with CO2 on and constantly with it off with two 6" passive intakes at the bottom of the tent. Additionally, I remove fan leaves when they are crowding. I will do a major defoliation in week 3 and probably raise the screen a few more inches next week since I have a lot of stretching left to do.

This week, I have been trying to manage stretching. I have been trying to keep temps low for the first couple of hours of daylight, but the stretching seems to happen during the dark period. I am pretty much completely out of screen holes for training, so I have been tying down tall shoots for training as best as I can. The canopy is only about 8" thick, but I continue to remove fan leaves to improve air flow. Some spots get condensation when the lights go out. I changed the timer on one light to go off 5 minutes after the other to give my equipment the chance to lower humidity before the temp drops. I added a couple more fans to hit some spots that weren't moving enough. It seems like removing fan leaves is one step forward, two steps back because each time I remove a lot of fan leaves, the plants come roaring back with more growth than before. I am ready for the stretch to end before my scrog becomes just a skeletal support system. I have spare nets in case they do need support. My initial 20 gallon mix clocked in around 600 ppm, but it spiked over 900 the next day. I have been adding 5 gallons of plain water every day, and the ppm stays around 550. I guess that is the concentration they want. Funny, I thought this strain was going to devour nutrients. I have no deficiencies whatsoever. I did have one issue after the rez change. I noticed the solution was not getting to all of the buckets. The GH Waterfarm kit I am using has 1/2" tubes which are blue and translucent. There was algae completely blocking 3 of the tubes. Fortunately, I had the foresight to install shutoff valves on the buckets, so removing and cleaning them was easy. There were some roots beginning to grow into the tubes which will become a problem in the coming weeks when they begin to clog the tubes. I don't know what I'll do since I can't lift the buckets, but I will figure something out. My opinion of this expensive bucket system is not pleasant.

I am posting this on day 20 of flower. Stretching seems to have slowed dramatically. Getting some great buds forming. Drinking about 7 gallons a day. Everybody is happy! I supercropped maybe 10 shoots that were too eager, and now the canopy is nice and even. A little taller than I planned for the scrog, but it should work out well.

This week stretching is done. One of them had a late growth spurt, and is now only 16 inches below the light. It doesn't feel too hot. Leaf temps are 78 right under the light. I'll leave it unless it starts to show signs of stress. You can clearly see her in the pics and video. I have a problem with controlling smell. My house has an entryway that is open to the basement but separated from the main floor, so the entryway smells like the basement. I know what you are thinking... But it is not flower smell. It smells too clean! The massive fan and filter are running at high power to control humidity, and that makes the whole basement smell not normal. Other than that, the tent is on autopilot for now. Not much work needed other than adding 5-10 gallons of plain water every day.

I had some trouble with pH dropping quickly this week. It kept dipping below 5 which I believe caused a lock-out of calcium that heavily affected one plant and mildly affected another. The rest were not affected. I also learned that 16" is too close for a 1000w HPS. The light was yellowing the colas directly underneath it, so I moved it up the last few inches. We'll see if the situation improves! I am getting a wonderful Fruity Pebbles smell in the tent, and not a hint of smell outside of it.

This week went pretty well. I didn't like my water temps at 75 degrees, so I picked up a chiller. It has been running at 68 for the past few days. One of the smaller plants has amber pistils now, and the trichomes look cloudy from a distance. I can't really get a clear magnified pic, but I know it isn't ready. It is way too early! It is the only one looking like that, so I am sure I will end up chopping it early, but hopefully not for another couple of weeks!

Picked up a couple of used chillers this week for a great deal, so now I have control over water temps. Most of the plants' pistils have turned orange this week. Looks like buds are bulking up at this point. Some leaves starting to look ugly. I'll start checking trichomes now. The end is near!

Buds are fattening up nicely. A lot of orange pistils, still probably 50% white. Trichomes at the end of the week are about 50% clear yet, so it may be another week or two. Now we wait!

Not much going on this week. Buds seem to be bulking up. Many colas look ready to chop at first glance, but trichomes are still 40% clear. Many colas still have all white pistils. I am checking trichomes from multiple plants every day now. Hoping the end is near!

This week I learned what happens when your plants can no longer tolerate high temps. Some buds started to look weird, and not only under the light. Check out the pics. I was able to hook my intake to a portable AC I have in the room, and that got the temperature in a more suitable range. Starting with flower week 11, daytime temps are 76. I hope the buds can recover and end up looking somewhat normal when they dry! Trichomes are still 20-30% clear. Have not seen a single amber trichome, yet. I am checking older calyxes with orange pistils in case the new, odd growth is not an accurate indicator.

Getting some really cool colors this week since I lowered the temps. Still waiting on those amber trichomes. At the end of the week, I've only seen two amber trichomes on two different plants. People are saying looks ready and time to flush, so today is day 1 of flush. I will probably chop in the next few days. Thanks for following along!

I am pretty happy with the yield. I had two plants herm from heat, so they are not as nice as the rest. They also pollinated a third plant, so most of those 3 went into the trim pile. The stretchy girl looks the best. She is definitely the frostiest. The small, damaged plants were very dense. I learned to prune way more shoots early on. Some branches with many tiny stalks were very time-consuming to trim. Also I learned that a 4x8 full of plants needs an entire room to hang! That filled my house with a very lovely but unwelcome smell. Learned a ton from this grow and looking forward to the next! Thanks for following along :)