Malawi by Ace tips & tricks?

Good reference sites: cocoforcannabis grow guides and dr. photon's corner articles... read them all when you have time or encounter the topic of discussion. Bruce Bugbee, apogee instruments channel on http://youtube.com. He's a professor from utah or colorado, i always forget which. One of those square states, lol. Some great videos to browse through. Beware anecdotal knowledge in this hobby. 75% of it is bro-science. It can often sounds good, even science-y, but absolutely nothing done to verify the hypothesis. i.e. it amounts to an uneducated guess. people that think plants are super picky about fertilizer formula merely use some esoteric formual that doesn't work well for most plants. it's a false positive. or is that a false negative? Can a plant have some esoteric nutrient needs? Yes, in some limited way, and not too common. Soilless gowing, which coco is, is easy. Coco is not magical. You treat it exactly like all other soilless media. I would suggest using some treated sphagnum peat moss (again 'raw is no good unless you put in some work, but not as dangerous as coco). Pro-mix bales are cheap, pH balanced and have a wetting agent applied. You'll never have to worry about a Na+ poisoning or your coco being unbuffered and leaching Ca++ while releasing K+ and Na+ from CES. (buffering coco gets this to a proper equilibrium with your fertilizer concentrations, which eliminates the leaching effect - as much Ca++ is gained and lost = an equilibrium context.) Coco is a perfectly fine chioce as long as it is processed properly. It should have 33% perlite (vermiculite, pumice stone etc) or close enough to that. Sphagnum peat moss, another soilless option (pro-mix), would need 50% perlite or similar. Unbuffered coco is highly toxic for plants. Make sure it's a well-processsed product and not some compressed 'raw' coco brick, unless you learn a good process to properly wash and buffer the coco - there is a guide for that on the cocoforcannabis website, too. Nearly every coco product i've seen claims it is "triple washed" but often that is not the case. SOP: Fertigate every irrigation. Always get at least 10% runoff. This runoff is waste water. You can use thiss waste water on in-ground plants but not potted plants. Toss it down the drain, otherwise. Wait for top layer to start to dry (it'll change colors) and repeat. Seedlings -- this EC below is not hot enough to cause any damage, but you can dilute the first irrigation if you want to. To avoid irrigating with a nascent plant, use a humidity dome to retain substrate moisture until it sprouts. remove the dome once it sprouts. Should have 2+ days from sprout before you need to irrigate again, which give the roots plenty of time to not be a concern. Simply irrigate as instructed - 10% runoff. Clones - don't wait as long to irrigate. you'll likely get some algea or something on the constantly moist top of the soil, but with no roots, you need to keep the buried stem moist enough.. dry = death. A humidity dome helps here, too, but you leave it on until there are roots. reducing transpiration is a key to cloning plants. The 10% excess runoff creates a consistent equilibrium of nutes in the substrate, relative to your fertilizer formula. It will not be exactly the same, but consistency is the important thing. With consistency, all you have to do is adjust formula based on observing plant until the formula works on 99% of plants. you can be confident you don't have any buildup caused by watering habits or any other funkiness in regard to expected nutrient content of the substrate. One less moving part makes diagnosing problems much easier. And honestly, if you aren't growing nearly perfect plants after 1-3 grow cycles, it's a massive failure. That is correlated with follwing anecdotal bro-science nonsense... struggles for years and years.. and maybe never really learn to do it right. 1.3-1.5EC overall concentration is all yuo need. VPD will be one of the biggest factors that impact how concentrated your fertilizer should be. Ratio is just as imoprtant as EC. N 120-130 (drop to 100-110 as leaf growth and stem elongation stops in flower) P 40-60 K 180ish Ca 100+ Mg 75ish S 100+ Your tap water may contain some of these, so yuo may need slightly different Ca, for example. This is a low-concentration formula. You may need slightly higher values, but it should be a rising tide effect where the ratios remain the same... i.e. if you want 10% higher, raise the dose of all products used to reach these ratios by 10%. Higher vpd will require a lower concentration. Lower vpd will need a higher concentration to meet rate of use of nutes in the plant. VPD impacts rate of drinking water. Faster it drinks the less concentrated the fertilizer should be. Ther are apps that will calculate ppms for you from multiple products given their dosage. i'm sure there is a web site too. You can make a spreadsheet too. This formula will need minor tweaks given your local variables. I guaranteed if you followed this, you'd have a very successful first grow and each successive grow would get easier as you tweak and learn as you go. Any problems, if any, will be minor, slow-progression, and easily identified for a proper reaction to fix it. Numerous professional Ag prodcuts come out to very similar ratios of nutes if mixed as instructed -- You'll see a "base" fertilizer, calcium nitrate and epsom salt. JR Peters Jacks nutrients, Southern AG, Athena pro line (5x more expensive for no fucking reason), masterblend, i think flora flex has something similar too, but like athena overpriced nonsense. fertilizer ingredients are commodities. they are cheap. there's no reason to overspend on it. You are just buying an expensive name while getting no difference in quality by paying more for it. As a point of reference i grow about 75-80 sq ft worth of canopy per year and spend 35 USD on fertilizer per year. If paying 100s/year on fertilizer, you are paying for a branding and hot air.

After growing this strain, the most important thing I would say is..........feed lightly, she does not need big feeds. Quarter to half strength is all she needs. She does not like much nitrogen in veg, but does ramp up a need for P and K during flowering. Give her 100% lighting at 18/6 and 12/12........don't faff around being gentle with her, she is an African Sativa that can handle tropical sun! Also, start LST early, do not defoliate, leave plenty of room for the "stretch" and be ready for a long, long flowering period! I have posted some pictures in week 10 in my "cannabis conundrums" diary for you to see, with some generic blah, blah in the description part, so ignore that, I just wanted to get the pictures up there. Good luck, I am sure you will be impressed, but there can be a bit of phenotypic variation.