High Frequency Fertigation

I am practicing high frequency fertigation as outlined on cocoforcannabis.com. I am very excited to try this as I've done a few "set it and forget it" outdoor grows with pre amended soil that only required watering. I am mixing my nutrients as per the recommendation for NER by Green Planet, then diluting to achieve desired EC targets. I will be measuring EC outflow daily until I am confident EC is stable in the runoff from each plant. The babies are looking great! BD came up with some bleaching on the cotyledons. Not sure what from. Could be due to the shell coming off early, being difficult or due to genetics. Plants looking great for week 1 veg!

Ladies looking great! Really stoked with the progress for 14 days from germ. Looking for first set of leaves with 3 nodes. Looks like it will be first day of week 3 that lights come down. I have a LUX meter to make sure I lower the lights to the appropriate level. EC levels brought up to just under 1000 by week's end. Will continue mixing proper NER ratios, then diluting to required EC. Trying to keep pH between 6-6.4 for optimal calmat uptake by small plants. I noticed some discolouration of the leaves on the lamb's breath on day 5 of this week. I was concerned so jumped on the cocoforcannabis.com chatroom, uploaded a few photos and got some good advice. I had been misting the girls directly as my humidity domes were too small. The residual water sitting on the leaves was causing a minor amount of stress to the plants. I stopped misting and found some larger covers that wouldn't touch the leaves.

Day 15: 3 nodes now visible on both plants. Day 16: Lights lowered. Canopy now at 20000 lux. At 22" from the canopy, my light is hanging lower than recommended by HLG but I am using a lux meter to ensure the amount of light isn't too much for my plants. I'm at home almost all day almost everyday so it's the perfect time for daily lowering of the lights and monitoring carefully. Day 17: Lowered light to increase LUX readings by another 50%. Canopy now at 30000LUX. One more lowering should bring us into optimal amount of light. Noticed a slight amount of curling on leaves last night so upped the ProCal just slightly. I make my mix using pre dosed calmag & potassium silicate water. I adjusted the final EC with this water to ensure calmag levels remain high enough to prevent the coco from "stealing" it in its own cation exchange points. Ended up adding Green Planet GPH Uptake to the lineup today for the PM feeding. Will continue at recommended dosage going forward. Also picked a foliar calmag. Made a foliar spray with recommended dose of GP Ocean Magic as well; adjusted pH to appropriate level. Did one application then ditched the Ocean Magic as you're only to use this as a foliar once weekly. Made calmag foliar spray and am now regularly using this in my mister. This will allow me to adjust with plain water as to keep the EC down and my nutrient mix stronger. Also had a revelation! Root Guard and GPH Uptake have very minimal impact on EC so therefore can be added after dilution as to insure a full dose of each of these are being applied at each feeding. Day 18: Ladies doing so great now in veg phase of growth. Calmag and Ocean Magic foliar application yesterday and continued Calmag applications throughout the day seem to have really given them a boost. Adding GPH Uptake seems to be a great addition to the lineup. It will take a few more days to truly notice the results.Looking like only a few more days until the Lamb's Breath sees its first round of LST. Noticing a bit of leaf curl on both plants. I have been fertigating with a litre of solution twice daily. I am going to reduce to once daily for at least today. Will try for smaller feeding tomorrow morning and see if I can still achieve the required 10-20% runoff with an EC no higher than 300 points more than inflow. Ceasing foliar calmag applications until plant stops showing signs of oxygen deficiencies, especially the Blue Diesel. Added a Wyze cam to the setup which is awesome. I can check the ladies all the time with out opening up and disturbing their environment. (THIS IS THE POINT WHERE LIGHT BURN WAS FIRST VISIBLE BUT I WASN'T AWARE!) Day 19: EC rose dramatically as i skipped evening fertigation (Day 18). This is NOT a recommended course of action. I was trying to adjust for what looks like oxygen deprivation to the root system of the Blue Diesel (IT WAS ACTUALLY TOO MUCH LIGHT!). I think this plant is lagging behind the Lamb's Breath a bit due to being bleached (TOO MUCH LIGHT!). I believe this may be the root problem (hahahaha!) and why it is a bit behind the Lamb's Breath. Droopy leaves are usually indicative of an over saturation of water in your media. I will fertigate 3 times today to correct EC issues. Still keeping EC to just under 1000 microsiemens. Reducing volume of solution given to the Blue Diesel by half. Day 20: Started LST on the Lamb's Breath. Slowly raising EC back up to ~1000 for the Blue Dream. Lowered the light by about an inch and shuffled the plants just a bit to get optimal light saturation. Everything chugging along at this point now. Day 21 & 22: Soooo I lowered my light too much. Started noticing signs of light burn on the LB. Watched some videos, read some articles then found my manufacturer's recommended hanging height. This HLG 100 V2 should be at 24" for veg stage. So thats where it got put back up to. Measured 20000LUX on the meter still which is within optimal range. I'm sure with the light up higher, the penetration to the lower canopy will be better due to the reflective walls of the tent. I removed the first pipe cleaner of LST on the LB to let it grow up toward the light a bit more. The one day of being tied down has had a dramatic effect on the production of branches lower down. I'll (probably) let it ride out for this week to allow unfettered growth before starting to tie down new branches. Days 23-26: Everything rolling. Figured out optimal EC is around 800 for inflow for both plants. Thinking this may be the optimal inflow EC for the Green Planet Line. Decided to pick up an HLG 65 V2 4000K light as well as an HLG 135w RSpec. Both are KILLER lights for sure. The 65 has really helped in veg phase. I would highly recommend it! Optimal light hanging height ended up being around 24" for the 65 which is manufacturers recommended height. Can't wait to see what the 135w fixture can do. Day 27: Switched lights to the HLG 135w RSpec today. Lowered light down to 90 watts so the lights aren't too much of a change from one day to the next. They are about 50% brighter than the HLG 65 V2 4000K when hung up to the maximum height my tent will allow. It looks to be a sweet light and the plants are getting new hues of green showing almost immediately.

Well it would seem I'm addicted to growing as predicted. In the last week, I had a friend donate me a 2x4 tent. So I went ahead and grabbed an HLG 135w Rspec to compliment the 100w V2 3000K I already had. Set up the 2x2 as a veg room for next grow so I can get a perpetual garden going. Onto week 1 of flower nutes from Green Planet. Seems like my ideal inflow EC is 800. Still watering just twice daily at 6am & 6pm. Adding nutes in correct NER, adjusting EC then adding macronutrients as well as GPH at the end. Massive amount of growth going on now. Node stacking and branches coming up to join the canopy. Considered defoliation but if I'm going to do it, I'm going to wait until the girls pre flower. I do not want to interrupt photosynthetic growth and trigger the flower phase. Each day these plants stay in veg equals more weight in flower when we are all done. Added an Exhale bag. Science seems to dictate that additional co2 will not create any additional growth in a vented tent (like mine). Also, your lights need to reach a concentration of 1000µmols/m2 which mine do not. But I had already paid for the thing and had it shipped before learning this. Oh well, I'm sure it wont hurt! Keeping the lights up high to try and keep some stretch going. Will update as the week progresses

Had a busy week and have lost track of exactly what happened on which day. Early in the week I noticed slowing growth and so checked runoff EC which was drastically into the negative, indicating the plants were taking in more nutrients than I was providing them. I have been increasing inflow EC all week. This has caused MASSIVE growth. I continued to adjust the LST points as well as commencing some defoliation after first pestils showed. This is the only real sign of flowering on either of the two plants thus far which is great as it will see these plants continue to get larger and larger. At nearly full concentration of suggested nutrients, I am quite surprised the plants are taking in as much as they are. Noticed the Blue Diesel is growing 9 pronged fan leaves which is a sign of great health. I am really enjoying growing with coco coir. It is so easy to manage though it does involve daily work. There is very little guess work and so long as you are good with plants already, it seems like the coir offers "the best of both worlds" between soil and full hydro. I do intend on starting a soil grow in the next few weeks to compare. Stay tuned!

Chugging along in week 6. Keeping lights at 24" from canopy so the girls keep stretching up. Keeping up with mild defoliation. Only removing leaves that are covering bud sites. Not doing any pruning as I am concerned about how that much stress would cause in these 2 autoflowers. Ran out of GPH Uptake for 2 feeds and could noticeably see a difference. Humic acid seems to work as suggested! (yes I definitely got more!) VERY happy thus far with Green Planet nutrients. I have been able to fertigate with the recommended dosages and am consistently returning negative EC values in runoff. Hoping these results continue as the ladies enter true flower. Seeing some real bud sites developing on both ladies now. Both are happy and healthy. I didn't expect to see such a comeback from the Blue Diesel Auto as she was the one with the bleached cotyledons. Can't say enough about HLG lights either. They rock!

Chugging along. Really stretching now and starting to show first signs of real buds. Plants are taking in more water now so I upped the feed from 1.5 to 2 litres. Haven't moved the lights, just letting the plants grow up to them. Rotating plants around 90 degrees at least once weekly. No more defoliation, leaving the LST spots alone but making sure they're not strangling branches in any way. Ride, ride, ride, let it ride!

Cruising. Kept the nutrients the same as last week as the plants are going a bit slower than advertised by crop king and Sonoma seeds. Looking like flowering will take ~10 weeks when all said and done. Minor amount of defoliation done. Will be the last time to make sure I don’t stunt these autos. And ONLY defoliating. No pruning as I’m too afraid it will stunt the plants. Lots of buds forming now. Plants looking great. Noticed that the sun shines through my windows for several hours and directly onto the plants so I have started opening up the tent everyday and letting the sun shine on them. Helping to ripen the lower buds and have them be less larfy when all said and done. This does cause the plants to drink water like no other so have had to up the volume on fertigations. I’ve been using a LUX meter to check and make sure top colas aren’t getting too much light. The thing works great! Well worth the purchase. My mothers on the other side of the tent are big so need less light and as a result I have been able to move two of their lights in close to the flowering autos. The additional light is definitely helping bulk up the plant. Currently over the two plants there is (as listed) an HLG 135w Rspec, an HLG 100 V2 3000k, an HLG 65 V2 4000k and a Mars Hydro TS600. Tons of light! I’m in isolation as 2 of my housemates got COVID. As a result, I have a LOT of time to spend babying these plants and it is paying off. See you next week!

The ladies just keep bulking and bulking. Starting to look really good now. Still think they have a few weeks to go and will let them go as long as possible. Drinking a lot of water everyday now. I had to flush twice this week but that is to be expected in flower.