Blue Dream DWC

Planted seedling in my DWC bucket once some roots were poking out of the rapid rooter plug. I set the water level a little higher until I saw some roots in the water. This is my first DWC grow so I’m kinda feeling it out right now. Plant looked a little pale this morning so I changed the reservoir and set the ppm at about 450 for week 2. See you in a week...

This was an interesting and educational week. I had two issues I needed to resolve. First, I realized my water level was too high and preventing root growth so I lowered it a couple inches and turned down the bubbles a bit and solved that issue. Second, the leaves were doing this odd twisting thing and looking a little yellow. It looked like heat stress, but it wasn’t really hot in there. It turns out the clay pebbles can get a bit hot so I got some more air circulating around that part of the tent and she bounced right back. I was patient and didn’t try throwing more nutrients at the plant since pH and ppm were spot on. She’s fully recovered now and rolling right along. Moving the light down to about 18” from the top for week 3. See you in a week...

Oh man, what a week. I came back after a weekend away to a very angry plant. Wilted leaves, twisted growth. Root rot. So, I implemented a multi-pronged approach to eradicate it. 1. Eliminated light leaks in the reservoir by adding more clay pebbles, fashioning a disc to cover most of the net pot, and even taping around the small hole where the air line comes in. 2. Cleaned the hell out of the bucket with bleach wipes, rinsed thoroughly, and also cleaned any bits of the air line that were in the water, in addition to scrubbing the air stone free of any debris. 3. Increased oxygen by lowering the water level even more and really cranking up the bubbles with the air pump. 4. Increased the amount of Hydroguard used in my nutrient mix. 5. Cut diseased roots away. I’m actually glad this happened. It’s a good reality check. Plant is in a holding pattern and I’m just waiting on recovery. The root rot was likely set in motion early on my too much agitation of the young roots and then exacerbated by light leaks later on. Water level is key my friends. I caught this issue early and I am hoping this is the turning point with this grow. If not, I used a free seed for a reason :)

It took about a week, but the roots have now fully recovered from root rot and she really started drinking water again. I topped around the 4th or 5th node and I’m going to keep it simple this time around and leave the training at that. Barring any more complications I expect to veg for another 2-3 weeks before I flip to flower. I bumped ppm up to about 550 for week 5 because she looked a bit hungry and ppm was dropping throughout the week. We’ll see how she likes that. See you in a week...

Well it’s definitely been more than a week since I updated. Lots going on. First, still dealing with brown roots after reservoir changes. The dude at the hydro store confirmed what I’ve been starting to suspect, which is that the chlorine in my tap water is killing all my beneficial bacteria from Hydroguard. So, I’m going to change course a little bit. I’ve got some UC roots on the way, which will allow me to start running more of a sterile reservoir. Plant is staying healthy on top so I’m not going to freak out about it unless I have to. Second, my veg has been really slow the last couple grows so I replaced my MH bulb and that seems to be helping a lot. Third, I’m streamlining my reservoir changes by setting up a second bucket so I can just bring in the new bucket and switch the lid with new soup each week. I may also start oxygenating the water for most of the week in the second bucket to kind of de-chlorinate it before I add nutes and adjust the pH. Hoping to flip to bloom on 3/1. Until next time...

Things have just been rolling along. I topped again yesterday and I expect to flip to flower toward the end of next week. I’ve realized that my brown roots were actually some kind of algae. The Hydroguard was keeping it at bay and at reservoir change yesterday I switched to UC Roots. So far so good and I don’t see signs of the algae coming back. Yet. I’ve also been bubbling water in a separate bucket to de-chlorinate it between reservoir changes. Hopefully these changes keep things steady. I am noticing some similarities with this strain to the 707 Headband I grew from HSO last year. Mainly that it really does not like the light to be too close. I’m sure the low humidity in my tent has something to do with that but other strains don’t seem to care. Seems like these two strains have a common parent somewhere because the leaves do the same kind of taco thing when the light gets closer than 15-16”. Will have to flip to flower this week because I might run into height issues if I don’t. Been working on making a flat canopy, but I can tell by the node spacing that flower stretch is likely to be significant. Will keep tying branches down as needed. See you in a week...

I let the new tops grow in just a bit and decided to flip yesterday, 3/5. Normally I’d let this plant veg for another week or two but I need this plant to be finishing up by early May. We’ll see how these smaller tops stretch and hopefully the yield doesn’t suffer much. I’ve adjusted feed for the transition to flower and we’ll see how she responds. I also removed some of the larger fan leaves to expose the smaller new growth to the light. My HPS lamp runs at 600 watts, so things will be a little warmer in the tent going forward. Next weeks update will be the first full week of flowering.

Things are going just fine for the first week of flower, but not perfect. She got a little over fed with N, which was due to me not backing off of the cal mag I use, which also contains N. Mostly just some clawing on a few leaves, so I didn’t freak out and just topped off the bucket with plain water. Other than that, I’m trying to give the individual tops some room, but I’m kinda doing the training I’d normally do in veg in flower. So I’m trying to be very gentle. I’ve removed the older fan leaves and cleaned up any that prevent light from getting into the middle of the canopy or blocking other tops. I expect the stretching to finish this week or next and again, I hope flipping when I did doesn’t affect the final yield too much. See you in a week...

Another week of flower in the books. Things should start getting interesting now. I’ll need to do some more defoliation this week to get light penetrating lower into the canopy. For future DWC bucket grows I’ll be trying to spread out the canopy more and I’ve got some good ideas for how to do that and make sure I can move the lid from one bucket to the other without disturbing the ties. It also looks like I need to dial in the flower nutrient mix just a little bit. There is just a little bit of nutrient burn on the tips of some of the leaves so I’ve been mostly topping off with plain water. I’m not sure if it’s the micro that I need to back off of or the bloom nutrients, but I will tinker a little next week when my feeding schedule says I’m supposed to increase the bloom nutrients by 50%. For week 3 I’ve decreased the veg nutrients by 50% and everything else is the same. Maybe too many details, I know. See you in a week...

Again just rolling along at the end of week 3 in bloom. Flowers are forming and the stretch has been crazy. I only have 6’ of height to work with in total. Some of that is taken up by my light hood and some is taken up by the bucket, so I have to try to keep my plants compact. I only have about 6” left to raise my light in the ratchets and keep it at the proper distance. I am pushing about 800 ppm for week 4 and I did some defoliation work this morning. I took out a lot of larger fan leaves covering the middle of the canopy and also cut off smaller tips toward the bottom to eliminate some larf. Hopefully that will help fatten up the tops a little more. If ppm keeps dropping through the week I will probably push ppm higher for week 5.

Things went alright this week, though I did get a little overzealous with feeding this week and ended up with a little nutrient burn on the tips of the upper leaves. I switched to fresh water for topping off to dilute the solution and that did the trick. After I took these pictures I did another defoliation session to get more light deeper into the canopy. The stretch on this pheno is insane! Still stretching in week 4, and I’m running out of rope on my ratchets. I am hoping she stops the stretch and starts packing on weight this week. Not too much resin production yet either. See you in a week...

Not much change since last week. She did keep getting taller and I had to take my light off of the ratchets to buy 4-5” more space. I think there may have been a little heat/light stress on the taller colas but nothing too bad. I admit I’m pretty skeptical on a big yield at this point in the run. I just don’t see a lot of room for what’s there to really bulk up. There’s also not a ton of resin production yet. I’ve still got 4-5 more weeks to go and a lot can happen so we’ll see how she finishes. See you in a week...

Mostly a routine week. I keep taking off the larger fan leaves about once a week. I started to drop the nutrient levels a little bit due to some continued nutrient burn at the leaf tips and I’m continuing that trend heading into week 7. There are some foxtails on a few of the taller flowers because they’re a little too close to the light, but I’ve run out of space to move it farther away. I also switched the light schedule to 11/13 going forward. See you in a week...

I’m a little behind on providing the week 7 of flower update. In a couple days I’ll be finishing week 8. Her calyxes are swelling and she’s making plenty of resin now, but looks like she needs at least another 2-3 weeks to finish. I switched from 12/12 to 11/13 to try to help her finish a little sooner. She does have a nice sweet berry smell coming off of her that I hope sticks around after curing. Since this looks like it will go beyond 10 weeks of flower, it’s a little hard to plan out when to start backing off of nutrients and starting the flush, but I will cross that bridge when I get there. See you in a few days for the week 8 update.

Week 8 of bloom is done and now we’re in the middle of week 9. The late flower stink is in full effect now and the pistils are probably 30-40% red/orange. Now I am starting to back off the nutrients in preparation for a flush in a week or two, depending on how ready she looks for harvest. I expect some leaves to start fading and changing colors during this time. See you later this week for the week 9 update.

Well this blue dream plant is finishing strong. I’m continuing to back off the nutrients and she is fading, swelling, and ripening nicely. I’m looking to start a flush this weekend, and I’m sharpening the axe for a harvest early next week.

Chopped this girl about 4 days ago, and these are the final pictures before I started taking her apart. Based on the smell I think I’ve got more of a haze leaning pheno. She’s been drying in paper grocery bags for the last 4 days in 50-55% humidity and temperatures around 65 F. Should be ready to jar up in a day or two and I’ll be back with a final harvest and smoke report in a couple weeks.

For my first DWC grow I think this went relatively well. I’ve learned what not to do in terms of overdoing it with nutrients, particularly during flower. I will be more conservative and only top off with plain water during flower to avoid driving the EC too high, which leads to nutrient burn once the high phosphorous flower nutrients are in use. I was a little disappointed in the pheno of blue dream I got from this seed in terms of height and yield. She was super tall but didn’t produce the huge fat colas I’ve seen on a lot of other BD plants. There are surely better plants in my remaining two seeds of blue dream. Next grow will probably be Em-dog, also by HSO. Thanks for checking this diary out all the way to the end and hopefully it helps any of you aspiring DWC growers. I’ll be growing with this method from here on out because I think it is the easiest I’ve found.