Summertime Wonder Express

Week 1 | Day 1 Veg Days: 1 The Setup: The next grow is under way! I have upgraded my setup from a 1.2m X 0.7m tent to a 1.5m X 1.5m- a large increase in floor space from 0.84m2 to 2.25m2 with the hope of turning out some more yield that will last me longer than one grow! The system consists of 6 x 25L buckets (or 5 gallon depending where you're from) and a 95L reservoir. It is a recirculating DWC system that should see each plant get fit and healthy enough to produce close to or over 100g per plant. This is the first time I am running plants in individual buckets, normally I have 2 to 4 plants in a larger rectangular container, but I found that there was a lack of oxygen in the water and roots weren't growing all the way to the air stone. The new setup aims to add more air to the water and give each plant it's own space to flourish. Additional lights have been included- I have run a 400w HPS/MH light for many years, and rather than upgrading to a 1000w, I have just added a 600w to the setup. (future plans are to get a 1000w Cree COB setup). Lights are now in cooling tubes rather than individual reflectors, this is a great benefit as the natural ambient temperature can reach 32C (90F) so keeping the temp down in the tent is vital. Grow Objectives: This grow I'm aiming for 100g per plant; 6 plants under 1000w (600w + 400w) should give me close to or over 600g total yield. This will be a large increase from my previous runs of ~250g. Plants: There are 6 plants in total- 4 x Wonder Woman (WW) seeds from Nirvana and 2 x Pineapple Express (PE) clones from a friend. The PE phenotype is amazing, super large buds and a delicious smoke. The WW are from seed so will see what they turn out to be over time. They are feminised seeds to I'll be pissed if one of them turns male! Seedlings have been on the go for a few weeks (since around the middle of December 2019 and we are now on the 7th of Jan) and are finally ready to be dropped into the system. Fingers crossed they don't freck!

Week 2 | Day 10 Veg Days: 10 Flower Days: 0 The system had to have a few adjustments this week. The gravity feed back to the reservoir was too slow and needed a thicker pipe to increase the water flow rate. Upped it from 13mm hosepipe to 20mm tubing. Its done the trick! Temperatures have been very warm and this has caused my water temp to rise. I am going to get an aircon for the room to cool things down- summer here for the next 3 months so going to eat shit if I don't sort it out. Plants are looking healthy. They are starting to root into the solution so we should start seeing them take off like a bat outta hell soon. The clones are taking their time to revert back to veg. Just bloody hope they do otherwise I'll have 2 empty pots for the remainder of the grow! Nah, maybe I an get some other clones and just see what happens.

Week 3 | Day 16 Veg Days: 16 Flower Days: 0 This week went well, considering I had multiple problems. I had an error with my water pump, and instead of it turning off, it continued to pump water into the system and flood it. The second problem I had was contamination in the water. I had to flush the entire system with Florakleen, then introduce fresh nutrient water to remove some floaties in the water. Since I did the flush and water change the plants have been booming! Out of the Wonder Woman, 1 is looking incredibly strong, 2 are looking good and growing an the fourth just seems to be slowly chugging along. Not sure if it is a problem with the setup or the plant, but the fourth WW seems to be the runt of the litter and slow to grow. We'll see what happens though. Plans are to top 1 to 3 of the strong ones and leave the others to do their thing. The Pineapple Express clones are starting to revert back to Veg. One has taken off like a bat outta hell, the other is slowly playing catch up. All in all the new water is doing wonders, but I am struggling with heat. I am investing in a portable aircon so hopefully we can bring down the temp of the room and water to sort that all out.