After last update, I left out of town for a week. A caretakes came by twice during that week, to push the tips under the net. When I arrived home after my week of absence on day 56, I was curious to see how the girls were doing. Remember my last update where I wrote that I: “elevated the saucers with carriage bolts (around 10 cm): that construction was actually quite flimsy, but at that time I felt quite sure it wouldn’t collapse.” Well, funny thing, they didn’t hold. The construction collapsed and the plants were tortured by the net and the side of the walls due to the increasing pressure of the slowly failing carriage bolts. Especially the sides of the plants that were pushed against the wall of tent, had very red stems. They were really drooping and a whole bunch of leaves and growing tips were deformed or damaged. I had no other option than to remove the net and rebuild the elevated self draining saucers.
However, on a positive note: the plants looked like they had grown quite a bit and they developed a whole bunch of side nodes. The coco was still wet, the automated fertigation had functioned properly. The plants were a bit pale though, probably because the feeding mix was so light.
I took the plants out of their torturous positions and removed the most damaged leaves and untangled all the leaves and stems. I also removed all LST binding wires. After that, I fertigated with a slightly stronger mix at EC 1.1 and made sure there was a lot of drain. I putted them back in the tent, but without the elevated saucers (thus lower light intensity) and without the net. To my own surprise, they were completely perked up the next day.
That next day, I elevated saucers again, but this time I made it solid. During those 24 hours of free growing, the plant gained some serious height (it’s like all the downwards bended stems, suddenly move up if they are unrestrained for 24 hours). When placing the net back, I had to push them down a bit, otherwise the net would be too high. Again, this stressed them out, hence they became droopy once again.
However, right now, a few days later, I’m fertigating daily and finally the plants are looking healthier with the day. Less droopy and growing pretty fast. Today I was bending and waving the grow tips down again. A few hours later and the tips were already pointing up: a strong sign that the plants are healthy. A few weeks back, even slight LST resulted in droopy plants (if they weren’t already). Also the top of the coco looks really clean; since the chlorine treatment, there’s no algae growing anymore.
Because the net was already filled for 75%, I switched to 12/12 yesterday. Is all the trouble over now? Can I finally start enjoying some beautiful, healthy and vigorous growing cannabis plants? Did I successfully overcome all the mistakes I made? Time will tell.
Thanks for stopping by, stay safe and keep on growing!
Smoked this from barneys last dam trip and it ripped me and the missis a new 1 high as hell sat outside bar people watching for hours.. Glad it grew well may try some day