WE GOT BUDS!
Started the week with a nutrient swap, going from the 3-2-1 ratio to 1-2-2 (Gro, Micro, Bloom) with one day of just pH 6 reverse osmosis water to start. I also switched out the individual KMC70011 wifi smart outlets I use to control lights and pump to one 4 outlet wifi power strip, allowing me to control a nighttime dehumidifier and exhaust / circulation fans separately.
The 22W thermoelectric dehumidifier doesn't do squat. They say it is good for 1,100 cubic feet, and my tent is roughly 45 cubic feet. However, with the exhaust fan the air is changed out so many times per hour that it is only really slightly lowering the humidity of the exhausted air. It collects 170ml of water per day at 80F 75% RH. Theoretically, there is only around 20ml of water in the air in the entire tent, so if I sealed it off the humidity should drop maybe 10% in an hour or two right? Well instead of dropping, it climbs about 5-10% with the exhaust fan off and just stays there. This device can't even keep up with the plant transpiration during the day *or* at night.
I had a bit of a SNAFU early in the week when I swapped the power strip-- forgetting to change the flood pump address so my poor plant went 36 hours without watering while I was out of town for a day. I came home to a really sad wilted plant. It took another 36-48 hours to recover and I reduced the concentration of the nutrient fluid by half (to 500ppm) to allow the plant to take in more water without getting over-nutriented while recovering.
I don't have any fun timelapse images this week, the plant has grown too tall for my tripod to see over. Just a boring post about watching grass grow 😏
Oh thanks for the info @BudKingsGrow! I thought I must be taking crazy pills because if I only watered once, it definitely looked sad. Two or Three times not great, but not like it just crossed the Sahara. Four, Five or Six times a day it seemed fine but would droop right about the same time. I could only tell on the timelapse that it sort of would "relax". By the end of this week I gave up changing the feeding schedule and just assumed I couldn't fix it. That is good to know that it is part of the natural cycle. It appears to happen about 12-14 hours into the day, sound about right?
@noodle, I think the time of day will vary with how you have your light cycle set, but a daily rest/awake cycle should happen near the same times. Your Lady is looking healthy and happy as can be!!!
Your plants are looking lovely, Noddle, Something I was interested in learning recently, It might be worthwhile to share.
Leaves max out photosynthetically. You can tell this stage by measuring the leaf temperature. It rises a few degrees. Alternatively, you can watch for the same moment by witnessing the leaves droop. My plants are on an 18 hr cycle. I can see this in my garden @ about the 16-hour mark.
@Mr_Positivo, Oh I've never heard about that! Definitely going to bust out the IR thermometer this week and make some notes. I've started tracking the VPD in the tent and saw it was a little low (7-7.5 through the day) so I've upped the ventilation a little to get it up. The science of this is just exciting.
those fan leaves in the middle pointing up to try to reach the sun are some of the number one perpetrators of shading and blocking air to nodes, causing them to lose the airflow light and space they need to bulk right.
going well overall and glad to see it -- looking forward to your harvest in this setup!
@Ripper, Thanks! I've grown lots of vegetables and herbs and lettuce indoors but this is my first attempt at this sort of thing. I'm pleased to finally see some vegetation taking off.
Just did my first harvest a month ago, congrats! let me answer a few of your questions.
**For future not if create an official grow question other members can get credit towards the grower of the month contest by answering and then being selected by you as the correct answer.)**
I decided to trim off my sugar leaves and freeze them to make fresh frozen dry ice shake. If interested, I posted a video on my diary of me trimming a branch, (lots of other examples on youtube).
I think your hanging technique is great. What helped me was to leave the lines a bit loose so the branches could hang down far enough not to interfere with the ceiling of the tent. If you just move the string line to the center of the ceiling supports instead of near the edges would maybe get better air circulation.
Anywho, great diary and nice first grow. Those buds look smokelicious!
@TheMachinist, Thanks for answering the questions. So that's what that question form is for! I'll be sure to use that next time I have one so people can get proper credit where it is due. Used your suggestion for loosening up the strings and moving them more toward the middle and it worked great for the second harvest, which had more plant mass to deal with but dried more quickly.
Kudos to you!
With the color change my guess is a week or two. I had a plant turn purple, and it was finished when the purpling made it to the sugar leaves, at that point the fan leaves sticking outta the buds on mine were starting to crisp up. when I checked the trichomes at this point I had maybe 5-10% amber on the calyx's. Just my experience.
Having trichome development on the leaves is normal from what I can tell, at least mine did. I think this is a good sign of things to come.
I agree with you on the defoliation, I took the same route and my plants look like I did a defoliation but I've only let the plant naturally shed it's under canopy fan leaves.
Her canopy looks perfect for the switch to Flower! Each plant will grow differently (even exact same genetic), so base your decision on when to switch on how you like Her profile vs. where axillary nodes are coming out. Amazing Work 😀
@BudKingsGrow, huh I was thinking about going the other direction from the top down to get more light penetration. Is removing the lower leaves beneficial in reducing humidity than the upper?
@bobo420, Great, thanks for the reply! I was worried that if I cut a couple stems off the plant would all of a sudden decide to go back to a growth phase or something. Going to cut the two bits off tonight. It really is a jungle though, you're right. It is hard to get any sense of scale in the photos and I tried to add a ruler but it just gets lost in there. Just one plant taking up 30x30x30" of space.
@Zannabis7, sorry I missed your message! It is an ELP 1080p webcam I bought off eBay, attached to a RaspberryPi just grabbing an image every 240 seconds with mjpg-streamer and shell script. At the end of the week I copy all the files off an dump em into ffmpeg to convert to H.265.
@Zannabis7 Yeah with the timelapse you can really see things I wouldn't normally notice because the plant looks great when I look in on it, but in the timelapse you can see it grows to a certain point then peaks and starts to sag. Next week's should be even better, assuming the webcam stops disconnecting and losing half a day at a time. It is also beneficial to be able to see the plant from the exact same spot for the whole week to see it fill out.