GrOCD - Jack 47 XL Auto Hydro

For this grow I kept my setup a lot simpler than last year. Going with Jack 47 because, well, reviews are awesome and we've had success with Sweet Seeds germinating well. From the pics and videos you can see I've got a simple bucket for the plant with no air stone, pump, or other shit in the plant bucket. All that is in the reservoir. Should make it easier to clean, flush, etc. I'll be able to just pop the lid off (with plant in the net) and put it on a clean bucket with pH balanced water while I clean the rest of the system, then hook it right back up. I also over-designed so I could add a second grow bucket if I want. Don't have space for that at the moment but non-loadbearing walls are easy to move, right? Using General Hydroponics for nutrients and Hydroguard for good measure. Knock wood I'm not jinxing things by posting before I have seedlings.

One out of two germinated seeds have now sprouted. Started the seedling nutrient diet. As you can see, I've moved the rockwool cube to the hydro setup. The tap root was showing so it was time. My nutrient schedule is in the pictures. For reference, I'm using a total volume of 24 L between the two buckets. For now we're enjoying the summer harvest. Well, we are harvesting. A lot. I'm questioning my sanity growing yet more, lol. I do it for the fun and glory. Also, yay pot!

She started looking good after 3 days of stalled growth. Thanks to the growmieverse for the encouraging words while I worried something wasn't quite right. Still a modest RH concern (high 30s is ok, wishing for 50). Cool mist humidifier may be in order.

Good week this week. Figured out temperature and humidity, roots are in the solution now, and raised the lights up a foot. Added a fan. pH is stable. Upping the nutrients considerably this week. Can't wait to see her start to shoot up.

Very good week in terms of vegetative growth. Upped the nutrition, pH balanced daily and the results were encouraging. Main challenge now is the top feed pump. Its pumping a higher flow rate than ever before and I honestly dont know why, and can't adjust down... so its splashing. Think I'll need to kink the hose or shield the clay balls surface so the splash stops spraying the underside of the leaves.

Switched to flowering this week (Nov. 1) and of course drained, cleaned and refilled the reservoir buckets with the flowering nutrient solution. Cleaning this week indicated more growth on the interior surfaces than normal so I also did a full H2O2 (3%) clean, with a good rinse afterwards. Also ran the air stone in a cleaning cycle for a few minutes. You can see that the discoloration from last week is gone, thankfully. Keeping the pH in check though I did let it slip with a few days in between readings there. Thankfully no substantial effect. I'm not sure I love the overall geometry of the plant... but it's healthy and has a decent number of colas forming so that's all that counts. Compared to the chilled and recirculated water system I used last time around, this is MUCH easier. My reservoir temps are a bit higher than I'd like but the Hydroguard is doing it's job and no issues so far. Fingers crossed it stays this way. Thanks for reading growmieverse.

Login issues led to missing a couple weeks, but things have been super smooth. Buds are looking sweeeet and hairy. And they're really fattening up. She's one thick hairy lady. Following the nutrient schedule without deviation, swapping and cleaning the reservoir every week (H2O2 clean), and keeping the humidifier filled. I swapped the pump. First one randomly stopped working for no apparent reason. New one I spec'd with a much lower pump rate and it's a great improvement. No splashing, just a trickle recirculation so I keep it on 24/7. The pH monitoring is so so so much easier now with the good Apera pen. What a difference it makes over the generic ones.

All in all she's doing pretty well. Growth is pretty much all in the buds and the room now smells strongly of lemons :) yum yum yum. Wanna lick my fingers after touching the plant. She is starting to show some leaf damage. I'm not certain what it is but could be light burn? That light burned the shit out of my wife's plants last winter (she upgraded to Spider Farmer)... so could be. pH is pretty stable and checked every day or two. Temp and humidity are mostly steady. Nutes are maybe a touch low? I am purposefully keeping a modest feeding concentration but pretty sure it's well within safe range. I think it basically leaves the light or some sort of root issue but those roots are just so good looking. Tapering off the nutrients now into the home stretch. No more Big Bud to be added and as of next week she's in flush. Very excited. See the picture of the nutrient schedule for anyone interested... and feedback if you have any 😎 I added another mature plant to the room. A friend's attempt at soil growing did not work out (did not use proper grow light) so I'm trying to help her produce at least a few decent buds 😕. No harm, there's space in the place and plenty of light to go around. Anyone reading - do you have experience water washing? That's my plan for this lady.

Microscope shows the telltale amber in some of the trichomes :). Did a full system clean with H2O2, long rinse, and the new solution is just pH balanced water and FloraKleen. Some crispy leaves at the moment but I'm not worried. Harvest is coming soon! Next post will be a harvest post and early smoke report 🙃

pH was important as expected and a bit of light burn later on in the grow but ultimately it was pretty smooth sailing. I used a very common nutrient (GHE) and not overly strong. Buds were thick, dense, and moderately pine smelling. The plant did not grow excessively tall thanks to LST, and the LST did not seem to have any ill effects at all. Foliage was thick, and I let it go for a very long time before doing any sort of defoliation. Even then it was modest and just to get light to the lower colas. Still in trimming mode and will continue to update :) Also, other plants in the house got spider mites. Not this one. Could have been that it was in hydro and others weren't but hard to say.