Back to Basics (but better!)

Back again growing some lovely Afghan Mass again, only this time in hydroponics and it's the XXL variety. Our first grow was the Afghan Mass in much worse equipment than what we have now so it'll be an interesting experiment to see how well it compares to the first run. Grow Notes: Transfer into medium @ 0141 14/09/2020 EC (Baseline): < 0.2 mS/cm pH (Baseline): ~ 7.5-7.9 On Day 2, added 100ml Connoiseur Grow Part A + B + 30ml Roots Excelurator into main tank and corrected pH from 7.4 to 6.0. EC reading after nuteing the water reads 0.7 mS/cm

Noticeable growth from Week 1. Had to transplant the original Eiko plant out for one of the solo cups as she managed to stunt her own growth by burying her taproot **into** a clay pebble. Swear I've never seen anything like it before. The root was so strong it almost managed to split the pebble. Either way, Eiko is now Eiko 2.0 from one of the solos and she got a little extra feed to help her through the transplantation process. Hopefully she won't die before next week from shock! Main tank topped up with Week 2 feeding schedule nutes and pH corrected from 7.1 --> 6.2

All individual plant comments are included in the caption of their relevant photo. In week 2 I had to top up the water in the tank as the water level was going down and the EC was too rich. So I diluted it down a little and that seemed to do the trick. Really should invest in a pH perfect by Torus Hydro. I'm foregoing adding extra nutes to the tank this week as the EC is already 1.6mS/cm and that's roughly as rich as it needs to be right now for these girls. Will keep an eye for any signs of more deficiencies though and if they continue to show I will refresh the nutrients in the tank.

I noticed that the plants were showing signs of toxicity so I double checked the correct EC and it should've been 1.3 as a maximum at this stage. I also messed up the nute feed by listening to the app by Advanced Nutrients. DO NOT USE THE BUD LABS APP. I ended up with an EC of over 3.6+ after adjustments by following the app. Needless to say the tank had to be diluted *severely*. After about 2-3 hours worth of dilution, we've now achieved 1.3 mS/cm and the plants are showing immediate response to the new conditions. All of them since taking these photos are now standing upright and seem to be reacting very positively to the fresh tank. I'm also seeing some growth on Garnet finally so I've decided to keep her rather than trying to transplant another coco baby. Later on this week, Freya will begin to undergo LST with a view of beginning the others on LST as soon as they catch up to Freya's height. 💪 💪 💪

Welp, despite some deficiencies rearing their ugly head at the end of last week we just about managed to get into the bloom week. Happy days! The girls are looking a little worse for wear after some defoliation but they look a lot better now than they did two days ago. I never ended up doing the Low Stress Training last week but I think once the girls have had a day or two on the new bloom nutrients they'll probably be strong enough to undergo some LST at that time. The tank has been completely decanted and re-filled with Bloom nutrients. They have been ratio'ed as per the percentages up above. Managed to hit the target EC of 1.7 for the mix. pH sitting nice too at 6.0 on the nail.

Unfortunately Garnet died this week and I'm not too sure why. I'm also noticing yellow leaves on some of the plants but again I'm not too sure as to why that would be happening. The pH of the nutrients is down at 5.7-5.4 within that range so it could do with coming up a tiny bit but I'm really not convinced that such a small offset in pH could cause that much damage to the plants. If anyone has any ideas on what to check or do, feel absolutely free to comment away any ideas that you think might be happening here.

The girls are still looking a bit dicey this week but all in all they look like they're recovering very slowly. This week because Eiko was growing so much I've finally started to put her under some low stress training. I've taped her down with some wire to the 11 o'clock position (you will probably see a picture of this next week with hopefully some strong new growth as she's looking super sparse). The others I'm going to leave to do their thing until they catch up growth-wise. I also took the liberty of adding some extra PK13/14 this week as I didn't realise that was supposed to have gone in at week 1 of flower (week 5 overall) so about 2 weeks behind on that. However, I'm hoping now that I've introduced it into the system we should see these girls slowly bounce back to life.

Bonus this week of no grow light photos! Flash only :D So I'm noticing that the heat stress from the LED has taken its toll on these girls. I followed the guidelines for correct height with the Mars Hydro but it just pumps out way too much light and heat for this little BudBox PRO. It also doesn't help that the interior material is 100% refractive white sheeting which reflects light and heat better than mylar. So it's over success has been its greatest downfall. I should've realised this sooner and raised the light above the guidelines given. Some of the leaves managed to bleach a little bit. Ah well lesson learned and light was raised a few days ago. They seem to be coping better now that the light has been raised but I still need to use the humidifier from time to time as the tent gets abnormally dry due to the heavy heat.

So as I said in the strain comments. I had a real bad time with the hydroponics system due to the LED lamp kicking out way too much heat and I think that caused the nutrient temperature to rise and mess with the roots. So I think I'll be reverting back to Coco for the next grow as I just get way better results with it and it doesn't need half as much maintenance.