Welcome back friends! Things are going well in the garden. I flipped to 12/12 on the 9th of Feb. Lowered the light to 24 inches which is where I'll keep it since the plants will start to stretch now. I'll see how they do at 20 inches, then start moving it up as they grow. I think I'm going to have to do some extreme training to keep the Hawaiian Snow in line and I'll probably have to give the Purple Strawberry Bliss a booster seat. I did some significant defoliation a few days before the flip, they aren't quite lolipopped but close-it's amazing how fast the leaves grow back. I also gave them some aspirin water on the 9th-1 325 mg tablet per gallon, and I'll give that again in 2 weeks-hopefully to induce Systemic Resistance and make these girls as strong as possible against any pathogens. On the same day I sprayed with a mixture of Potassium Bicarbonate-1 tsp per liter, and neem oil-1 tsp per liter and a few drops of Dr Bronner's soap. You can see a few small burn spots from this treatment, not bad at all-I think I added too much soap or maybe the Potassium Bicarbonate was too strong. I'll spray them with this one more time before flowers really start to develop. I'm a big fan of spraying to prevent Powdery Mildew and Botrytis. I've also begun giving them 1 ml Hy-Shield per liter, twice per week-it's a Chitosan product made by Sipco, the guys who make Hygrozyme. I've also been spraying with it once per week. I should have said this earlier in the journal, but I spray something twice per week during veg-Bioag Ful power plus liquid kelp one day, and Southern Ag Biological Fungicide and Hy-Shield Chitosan-2 ml/liter the other day. Then, every two weeks I spray with Potassium Bicarbonate and Neem. This way, I'm hoping to prevent any spores from getting established prior to flower. Chitosan is a powerful preventive treatment for bud rot.
For nutrients, I'm loving the switch to Maxibloom. You can see the growth from last week to this week has been good. I can already see tons of roots poking through the 3 gallon bags just a week after transplanting them, so they'll be ready for a higher PPM soon. 700 ppm is the max I'm aiming for, but I'm happy to stay lower if the girls are liking it. Right now I'm only feeding 3 grams Maxi per gallon, but according to the KISS method, you can go up to 7 grams, but honestly I'm not sure if you need to if you are feeding more than once per day in Coco. Right now I'm feeding twice per day, 12 hours apart and I'm getting a lot of runoff, just to help keep the coco PH down in range, and to prevent salt build up. My runoff is always within 100 ppm of my solution, so I think it's good. I'm also feeding 1/4 teaspoon Epsom salt per 3 gallons, in one of the feeds per day. My mag deficiency disappeared as soon as I started feeding them epsom salts and reduced their calmag. Now I'm just feeding calmag once per day, just 2 ml per gallon. I think the high dose of calmag I had been feeding was actually causing my mag deficiencies. MaxiBloom is 5% calcium and 3.5% magnesium-this is a much higher ratio of magnesium to calcium than in Calmag products, and that seems to be the ticket for me.
Training: Lots of LST daily, tying branches down to binder clips attached to the bags. I'm shooting for 12-16 colas on each plant. The 630 watt DE CMH is an impressive light, better penetration than the single ended lights I've had, and a perfect footprint for a 4x4 tent. The bulb I'm using is a "red enhanced" bulb from Iluminar made with Japanese arc tubes-I'm impressed with its quality. For airflow I have a AC Infinity 8" exhaust fan dialed down to the 2nd setting-a truly impressive amount of air being pumped out. I have filters over the passive intakes on the tent and they are shaded with cardboard so there is no direct light entering the tent-I also have two 8" duct tubes attached with filters for additional passive intake-there is a TON of air being pumped out of the tent and I need a lot of passive intake to keep the tent from getting sucked in. Inside, I have a lasko tower fan hanging on it's side as my main source of air circulation hanging 1 ft over the plants-this blasts a curtain of air over the tops without too much direct contact. I also have a smaller lasko fan moving air around the pots underneath the canopy. Really good airflow from these, no stagnant areas. Sorry for the long post, I just realized I didn't explain any of this earlier, just in case anyone wants more details. Thanks for coming!!
@Paulb420, Thanks bud! I just got a couple more Rainbow Cake seeds-I ordered them when I thought my clone wouldn't take(but it did), so I think I'm just going to save them and use the clone as a mother plant. Very cool strain!
@Paulb420, She's been a good grower for me, took to training really well, very fast growing seedling. I try to clone everything I sprout until I know if it's a keeper or not. You can really see the Archive genetics coming through on this plant, so I'm thinking this will be the one keeper out of this group of plants for me. Getting excited to see it pack on the weight!
@Smokwiri, Thanks! I'm proud of the comeback they're making after I light burned them, keep checking back, I'll do my best to raise them up as proper young ladies!