run#6 Week 2: --------------- I'll make this brief: My posts are pretty long. For the hasty reader: A friendly AI gets to sift through my very personal logs & notes, then drafts a competing weeks journal (usually on my expense). "The Terpene Front" is back - hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Extened notes the report was based on and personal ramblings follow down below, as per usual. Let's go! --------- PATHÉ DISPATCH — THE TERPENE FRONT, WEEK TWO [newsreel crackle, brass fanfare] GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. The great heat front of summer has RETREATED, and our correspondent ventures forth once more. DATELINE: BASE CAMP SIX. Three new specimens in tow: Pineapple; Mango Frost, of the F1 Frosts; and Gorilla Cookies, on her FOURTH expedition with this man and STILL willing. None of them, we stress, VOLUNTEERED. Last season’s Inline Fan returns to temperature duty, its summer disgrace forgiven. The radiator has NOT been invited. [ominous timpani] THE LONG POLAR NIGHT. For days the specimens languished at FIFTY-FIVE micromoles, a twilight so dim they stretched toward it like explorers crawling toward a distant lantern. The cause? Our correspondent measured the lamp’s HEIGHT. He placed his thermometers WITH CARE. And then he forgot to turn up the LIGHT. Again. Then came SUNRISE, a ramp so steep the specimens went straight from polar night to MIDNIGHT SUN: twenty-four hours a day, no sunset. Mango responded by refusing to grow taller AT ALL. The height charts have recorded the whole affair for POSTERITY. BENEATH THE CAMP: HOT SPRINGS. Probes buried in the soil read twenty-four degrees. Our man now carries ICE down to the roots by hand, a polar party in reverse. AND THE WEATHER? He has begun MANUFACTURING HIS OWN. One fan blows wind. A SECOND fan has been engaged solely to interrupt the FIRST: five minutes on, fourteen off. Meteorology, ladies and gentlemen, has never been so DOMESTIC. [record scratch] BUT NOW, THE DISCOVERY THAT SHOOK BASE CAMP. Before departure, our correspondent undertook a GREAT SURVEY of soil itself: component by component, EC by EC, pH offset by pH offset. He searched the land for one humble thing, soil WITHOUT fertilizer. Every outfitter’s soil came pre-loaded, even the SEEDLING mixes. He studied so deeply, we are told, that the word “soil” LOST ALL MEANING to him. And then, exhausted and scholarly, armed with more knowledge of the earth than is strictly healthy, he walked into a shop and bought... PRE-FERTILIZED VEGETABLE SOIL. Three-three-three. He did, in fairness, CUT IT with his own components, a gentleman’s dilution. Then he BEDDED THE INFANTS IN IT. It was not diluted ENOUGH. The seedling nests ran HOT. Nutrients piled up, and nobody could say WHICH ones. The pH sat on the wrong side of the border. Leaves faded pale, and Mango DROOPED, a droop that looked like too much water but was likely too LITTLE. [stern voiceover] What saved them? Not the survey, and not the spreadsheets. It was a HANDFUL OF MIXED DIRT at the edge of each nest, a soft border worked in by pure reflex, so the roots could wander outward without striking a wall. Science, rescued by HOUSEKEEPING. [timpani, softer] And now, cautious HOPE. Chlorophyll-B returns, fresh and minty BLUE-GREEN. Pineapple leads the party, a CHAMPION. Cookies hung back shyly, then SUDDENLY caught up, precisely when Mango took the lead in SUFFERING. And Mango stands upright again in a lime-grass green of her own choosing. Our correspondent has made them a promise. After fourteen days beneath a sun that never sets, there will be... a NIGHT. [fanfare, film flickers out] THIS HAS BEEN A DISPATCH FROM THE TERPENE FRONT. READ YOUR SOIL BAGS. GOODNIGHT. ------------------------------ What this was based on: run#6 week 2: Hot Seedling Nests ------------------- The metal inserts you see near the pot centers roughly mark the size of the seedling nests. Often, when starting a new cycle, I find myself scrambling for seedling nests components in hindsight, ringing up people to check out their garden soils because there is an emergency. run#6 was different: After what felt like days of looking for unfertilized soil online, I knowingly borrowed a pre-fertilized 3/3/3 product because I finally needed "something". Every shop had pre-fertilized mixes, even the seedling soils were full of them. Instead, while working on nutrient curves, I tunneled into classifying soil components, their individual EC and pH offsets and nutrient compositions. I was completely baffled and brick-walled by the complexity. I was hoping to elegantly side-step my unsuccessful product searches by "cooking up" some seedling nests from raw materials I had, but greatly under-estimated what there is to learn about "soil", a word that had just lost all meaning for me. So, rather than trying to start a soil business, I borrowed some general purpose vegetable soil and tried to thin it out a little with the components I use. That was a huge mistake. It easily resulted in a few days lost from the valuable seedling-veg phase, but it only slowly dawned on me why. The seedling nests were too "hot" still, my fairly conservative nutrient cocktail already seemed to cause symptoms akin to nutrient lock-out. Some stuff seemed to accumulate and I did not know which. K, Ca, Mg and N were the likely culprits, when P deficiency symptoms could be cured within days by upping the dosage. But even worse: I completely forgot about the fact that my medium's pH differed greatly from the seedling nests components. An offset of at least +0.3 was needed - this entire time. So I started eye-balling my daily pH values in accordance with the transitional phase, when roots slowly explore their new home medium. Thankfully, the high biology contents caused better pH buffering in the nests - so that zone was fairly stable - just in the wrong kinda way ... Things that likely saved my butt: - No hard seedling nest - medium boundaries. Every nest had a transitional zone worked in, mixing a bit of both before establishing a core. This almost automatic move growers make made a big difference. The roots could discover gradually without ever hitting an "acid wall of fog". - pH differences were noticed late for spectacular results, but meaningfully early. I would up the pH when the roots were just contained in the nests, and gradually transition towards my medium's pH as they grew outwards. Or, at least, that's what I hoped would happen. But uncle Pete has some tricks up his sleeves: To help move nutrients towards the leaves when the roots barely could, I improved my good old foliar spray - originally designed to help with Far Red expansion stress. Bypassing root feeding with a daylight-only spray really helps, when poor visibility and low hanging scrog nets are our enemies at night. It delivers some Ca, Mg, but plenty of micro-nutrients fairly close to where they are needed, when the roots have other problems to deal with. (Also, I am secretly leaf-feeding a plant in the living room that I accidentally treated like a gold fish.) Quick, additional facts: ------------------- - Mango's watering was a challenge, drooping indicated larger problems, soil sensors disagree with cultivar? - I quickly recovered my PPFD ramp, cultivars basically told me when to stop increasing. Mango had a personal "cloud" when recovery was tough. See impact on size in the heights chart. - Climate is really stable, I am happy and focused on randomizing wind patterns instead, also upping transpiration for plants - Chlorophyll-B production finally underway, towards the end of week 2. Fresh, juicy blue and minty green hues intermingle with an exhausted-chlorophyll / mild nutrient-lockout yellow wash on all cultivars. Pineapple recovered and started producing healthy greens first, Cookies followed the lead shyly, Mango confirmed capability under "competing priorities". - Cookies suddenly decided to catch up in height, after Mango took the lead in suffering for the week - Medium temps are not amazing, reaching up to 24°C. Ice-pack cooling is back to lower nutrient solution temp to 12°C, then misting in slowly to arrive at 18°C for longer durations - several hormone-proximity-mines have been deployed in my medium, for roots to discover ... ---------- Thanks for checking out my journal, stay healthy! - Pete