Canny's Return

Off to a great start! Canny's Return! I am growing Ten Plants as a result of a successful (Corona Special) order from Grower's Choice seeds: a five pack each of Tangerine Dream Auto and Northern Lights Auto. Germinated them 4/6. Success as to all 10! even I'm surprised... Five days later takes us to Week One. Planting medium is: peat moss & vermiculite, with dolomitic lime and gypsum added to balance to PH. All seeds got a dusting with mychorizae when planted. 2 TBSP worm castings mixed in each pot. They are getting water that is approx. PH 7.0

LIGHT: In acknowledgement of the fact that each of the positions in the garden gets a differnent amount of light, and to try to equalize the Total Light Integral of the grow, I began "shuffling" the plants daily, according to a formula, so that all plants get equal time in each of the positions. ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING: I have been charting temp/humidity pretty regularly. But this week I received the and installed PulseGrow monitor to keep track of conditions within the tent to a higher level of detail. HEATER: One of the things I learn is: it's getting really cold at "lights-off" in the garden and, worried it may be slowing growth, I install a very small (100W) space heater in the garden that goes on low during the night period. This raises the temperature about 5 degrees, from around 64-65F to 69-70F. NUTRIENTS: began using weak nutrient solutions. I got sloppy with PH in here and made some assumptions that were not tested (underestimating the extent to which my PH would decrease as a result of the nutrients, and failing to test them...

Installed 50W Incandenscent lamp on timer to go ON for the last hour of the light cycle. Noticed couple spots on a couple leaves - poss. calcium deficiency? Changed up exhaust fan. Runs 15 mins on/15 off, etc.

Installed small (100W) heater inside the tent for nighttime. This solves the ten degree F dip in temp when LED turns off for the night. Now night-time temps are above 70 degrees. Began treating the plants with a bit of epsom salt for sulfur as there may be signs (hard to see in pic) of a deficiency. Some of the ppm level of my nutrient solution is from this--that's not all fertilizer. I have been on the light side of fertilizer. Plants all showed sex this week, first some, then all. Ten out of ten females. Very very happy with Grower's Choice seeds! Installed a G8 Bloom Booster red LED in the tent. Next week I begin a bloom formulation for feeding.

This is the first full week of flowering. Plants are looking great. I do notice some spotting issue on the leaves that has continued, even after my attempt last week (and once this week) to boost the magnesium levels by adding epsom salts to the nutrient solution (1 tsp/gal). All plants (all fricken ten) are healthy females in flowering! I installed a G8 Bloom Booster Red UFO lamp this week. Had to reconfigure the "light-print" by moving the Mars hydro and cramming in the G8. Also this week upped the CO2 quotient by adding an "Exhale" CO2 generator bag.

This week: LIGHT: Added a 40W Hi output fluorescent UVB bulb. Rejiggered it and threw that bad boy in. I'm going to start with 90 min a day from 36" away, and increase the amount of time the UVB is on, to a max of 6 hours. (The plants change position every day (according to a formula) to be able to evenly take advantage of all the different light in the tent). Did some DEFOLIATING: (removed leaves from lower third of plant on the basis those areas are getting minimal light and are contributing to excess humidity in the room. HUMIDITY: is rising in the room...trying to keep it around 50% by means of intake/outflow fans and fans inside the tent, and have been largely successful until this week...messing with the fans, timing, etc. ISSUES: the leaf discoloration issue in several plants (TD2 ) continues. I stirred 2 TBS of dolomitic garden lime pellets into the container. It's not easy to know what element(s) are not optimized. FEEDING: this week with light solutions containing FF Tiger Bloom and Sensi Cal-mAg. Example: 5 gal water, 1ml dechlorinator, 5 tsp Cal-mag, 3 tsp Tiger bloom, 3 tsp unsulfured molasses. This is the week I got more on top of the PH. All the water that went in was perfectly PH bal (6) in a way that I had not done as consistently, before.

Solid week in the grow room. Lots of growth as they triple in size from the onset of flowering around day 23. LIGHT: this week gradually adjusted the time of the UVB light: it is now on a for 4 hours a day. LEAF DISCOLORATION: It's interesting to see the progression of the yellowing as I continue to try (gently) to correct it. TESTING: of water runoff reveals high levels of dissolved solids. I resolve to flush all plants in the garden. Each plant is flushed with 10 gallons of dilute balanced nutrient formula at 6.0 PH (over this week and the following week). Runoff is then reduced greatly to the approximate EC of the dilute solution. HUMIDITY:Struggling with humidity as high humidity has invaded the grow space and is not helped by the massive transpiration in the space. I add a very small space dehumidifier in the area as it was nearly impossible this week to keep the humidity under 60% (Due to the ten plants tightly packed within the 3X4 ft area I am very nervous about bud rot/mold and want to keep that humidity LOW). NL5 A 'LATE BLOOMER': Although all ten plants in the garden showed sex within a day or 2 of one another (day 23-ish), NL5 is really showing the sativa element in the genetics: the bud formation is just not developing as rapidly as all the other plants. BUT, NL5 is still growing hard...I believe it will ripen a SOLID 2 weeks after the other nine plants. I decided to gift it to a fellow grower who has a little extra space to finish her there and perform testing...

All the plants got flushed. The flushing essentially involved pouring 10 gal of extremely dilute (.29 ms/cm) ph balanced Dyna Grow sol. through each plant. They are developing up nicely, even though some of the leaves are yellow/brown and look nasty. Odor is mild.