Not going to lie, I made a really long post but the page refreshed and I lost it all so here goes nothing.
This round has 2 Strawberry Candy from different cultivars (Bloom Seed Co.), 1 Wedding Cake (MSNL), and 1 Cherry Shylock (Sunleaf Seed Co.). These are all clones I have flowered before. Strawberry Candy is very stretchy and the other 2 are shorter and bushy so training will be the theme of this grow.
Please excuse the sad look of these plants as they have been in a drawer getting 20w of led for the last month because my veg tent is full doing a fem seed run. They have a few issues because I have paid very little attention to them other than topping them a few times to restrict growth. I feel that this is a plus because it will allow me to demonstrate the rapid growth and correction of a proper RDWC setup.
The system is running 1150ppm and 450ppfd+6-12% at canopy height of far red and uva in equal proportions though i would opt out of uva(380nm) if i were to build this light again. The dimmer is currently set all the way down reading 269 watts at the wall and the light is approximately 2ft away.
Shout out to Shane over at Migro and the PPFD app for optimizing the Uni-t lux meter for use as a ppfd sensor. I have been using the Photone app but it is not terribly accurate from my anecdotal evidence. If you get a Uni-t make sure it's the Bluetooth version as there is another version that is not. Paid about 25 USD for mine though prices varied between 50 and 20 so shop around.
I run GH maxi series nutrients because they dissolve well in water and don't cause system sludge or foaming. In veg I run 7g of Maxigro per gallon, calmag, and silica. In flower I substitute in Maxibloom and add Liquid Koolbloom and Floralicious plus.
I generally run mushroom bags but need to make some more (I fruit and eat them once they are done myceliating).
I will do my best to do weekly updates. Here we go!
There is a small 10x in the bottom right corner if you zoom in.
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Chop chop!
I was very disappointed with the final product of the Cherry Shylock (probably why it was free/perhaps it was just a bad pheno). So disappointed that I either fed it to my worms or set it out to be processed for the very minimal amount of hash it will produce. It was mostly leaf and not even particularly resin coated. In all fairness it got completely dominated by every other plant so perhaps it would have been better. Either way it's gone and all of the seeds from the previous cross will be discarded. I kept it for the terpenes and was hoping to make wax from frosty buds but it just didn't pan out. Spilled milk and all that.
Strawberry Candy non-keeper
Wedding Cake
Full bucket of stuff I just didn't want to hang. Most of these branches are in the hanging dry net and some are worm food. Going to run them for hash after dry.
Strawberry Candy keeper. You can really see how much of the space it actually took up.
Keeper. Not even close to the biggest branch lol. I was chopping and trimming from 4pm to 3:30am so I was just trying to finish and didn't take many pictures. Sorry about that. Had a couple full purple branches I really wanted to snap but apparently I didn't.
Hanging. Dry net is very full. I only hung the best of the best. Trimmed wet because the RH is still very high where I live. Lost about an Oz to budrot in the dry last round and didn't want to deal with that again.
Next grow will be 1 keeper pheno and 2 Chill Out OG and possibly 1 new genetic.
Changing the res water to ro water for flush currently. This run is almost over. Planning to cut them down on Wednesday. Ready to optimize this space for the next round. Need to make a few alterations to this new tent/room/closet, whichever you fancy. Pretty happy overall. Front right plant just didn't want to grow up to be big and strong. Oh well. On to the next one.
Think I'm gunna pull them in about a week. Swapping res to sub 200ppm on Wednesday and turning the lights and water temp down for a fade and a flush.
A couple days late but it's all good. All the plants are finishing at different rate. Probably just going to let them all ride and have them in different states of development. Should be a very good harvest. I don't like the wedding cake structure at the moment but it looks like 3 weeks out maybe 3.5. The terp profile isn't anything special. The cherry shylock front right just got buried; didn't stretch at all. Thought I could lollipop it and get it to grow up but it just wasn't having it all grow. It has the worst tip burn since it couldn't get the light to use the feed. Forgot how huge the keeper gets. It's burying everything. Ready to get them down. Trying to figure out what exactly I want to run in this room next.
Beginning of week 7. Got sick of the tent. Built a room instead. Plants are on a rolling tray that I can pull out to do all my work. It was a bit of a pain to do in week 6. Broke some stems but it's all gravy. It needed to be done. Only lost 1 top no big deal.
So I missed a week. Sorry for the gap. 5 weeks in flower down, 4 to go. I have been holding the ppms at 1400 because the plants got too big again lol. Have a touch of tip burn on the the plants because I can't turn the lights up as high as i need to. I have a plan to fix plsnt height next run. I'm going to cut the floralicious plus for the first three weeks of flower next run to reduce stretching. I didn't have to beat them up as much as last time though. Just 1 supercrop. Those extra kelp hormones are too much for my space honestly. Heavy, heavy defoliations have happened the last 2 weeks to dense up all the lowers. This grow has been a good showcase of how different strains behave. The cherry shylock has stayed super squatty while the wedding cake and 2 strawberry candy plants have become huge. The wedding cake in the back right quadrant is being a foxtailing weirdo but the plants are still stacking nodes so I'm just here to observe. Interested to see if it continues after week 7. Been a fun grow so far. I'm excited to have a few different flavors to choose from. Plants are drinking about 20 gallons of water a week now. Considering my options to give myself more space next round. Might scrap the tent and just build a space for them. Undecided at this point.
Week 3 of flower complete. Light is at 500w and about 8 inches from the highest tops. Ppms are around 1400 currently and I can't push any harder because one plant is becoming angry with me. I have been defoliating a little here and there and everywhere all week. As you can see, the plants didn't care that I only gave them 2 weeks before flip. Running out of room again but this time I have space to move the light up. I supercropped most tops mid week. They should stop gaining vertical height any day now but I still have a little wiggle room with lighting.
In other news. The plant in the front right quadrant is not the plant I thought it was. The wedding cake is behind it and that is the cherry shylock. The only reason I know is because of the terpenes. I must have mixed them up when I put them in the system. The cs doesn't enjoy the heavy feed as much as the other plants and has a bit of tip burning and a pretty underwhelming structure. The node stacking is extremely tight and it didn't stretch much at all. It is extremely heavy in myrcine, which is a strong contender as my favorite terp. Hope it can hang with the others. I will be monitoring it for bananas all grow because it's a little stressed. I tried my hardest to keep the plants similar in height but it didn't work out. 3 out of 4 is pretty good though I suppose.
I recently made a pheno hunting setup I will be covering soon for anyone interested.
There may or may not be some Chill Out OG in the mix. Big...Huge...Enormous shout out to Chris for providing me the opportunity. Hope I do it some justice. Thanks again!
Week 4 in system. Week 2 in flower complete. Ppms around 1400. DLI is at 40. Will probably bump it up a bit after this last week of stretch. Things are getting quite large again hahaha.
Week 1 of Flower complete. 3.5 weeks in system.
Signs you're pushing your plants too hard.
End of the second week in the system. I added in 12 gallons of feed water today. Haven't checked ph all week and it was spot on before I added the water as it usually is. This is the first time I messed with the res since i added floralicious plus. Ppms are now at 1400. As you can see from the second photo there is no longer an issue with excess nitrogen. The light adjustment did the trick. Just did a light defoliation to remove stacked fan leaves to prevent moisture pockets. I will be flipping these girls here in a few days. Currently rebuilding a transmission so my time is pretty thin at the moment. Figured I'd snap a couple pics since it has been two weeks. Can't wait more than like 3 days though or we will end up repeating last run. Will post when I get to it though. Full res change needs to happen soon.
Almost mid week update and another chance to teach something most growers don't discuss. As you can see in the pictures I have a slight nitrogen toxcicity beginning to emerge. The solution for me isn't what you'd think.
I'm at 1300ppms on the 500 scale currently in the second week of veg. Most growers would opt to lower their ppm but this is the sign I've been waiting for. Instead, I bumped my lights up 60 watts. The light is now at 348 watts at roughly half power and 20 inches above the canopy. The canopy is now getting between 40-45 DLI.
By increasing light I am increasing the plants needs for nutrients. The result will be increased growth rate and a subsequent increase in nutrient utilization. If Co2 levels are adequate in your grow space then you can increase intensity rather than lower ppm. Maxi series nutrients are so cheap that there is no waste. When I do my res change I feed my banana trees outside anyway. They are huge btw.
I also added in 1ml per gallon of floralicious plus. The extra growth hormones from seaweed extract will help make these girls huge fast. They also help the plant deal with stress of being pushed so hard. Started to Scrog so I can fill out the canopy. See you at the end of this week.
One week later. Back to being healthy. Haven't added anything or even had to adjust ph since the initial feed. About to add 5-10gal more nutrient water. I change my res every 2 weeks. Lmk if anyone wants to see where my res water goes when I'm done with it.
I have been pancaking them out every couple days. This will be the last week of veg. The plants spent just as much energy on root expansion as they did canopy growth since they essentially had no rootbase prior to last week. Ppms at 1030 and ph is 5.72. Ppms dropping faster than water usage, which means they want a higher ppm/water ratio. I will be adding 9g per gallon with new feed water to achieve this. Probably going to bump the ppfd up to 550.
Thanks for sharing. I'm interested to see how this one turns out. @Cam Z Do you have an Instagram?