Its been a week since these seeds popped and they are going really slow compared to the Earth Lover. Only 4 of the 6 popped and one of those is deformed and will get tossed today. Only one baby leaf and no new regular leaves at all. So that leaves me three babies to work with and all three are still very short with small leaves.
Its possible they just dont like the perlite in the mini hempies. I got lazy and just re-used the same perlite from the last batch - algae and all. Im hoping they will perk up once put in the system. Im debating how much longer to wait. They havent really gotten much taller at all in the last two days. Im thinking I better just do it even though they have very short available stem length to grip with the net pot puck.
Normally, I dont worry about relative humidity or VPD - other than to make a mental note that my humidity is to low and my VPD is too hi most of the time. For the most part, there isnt anything I can do about it other than lowering tent temps way down, so I pretend it isnt that important.
You would think that with the RH outside the house being in the 80%-90% range, that my tent would stay higher than 36%, but the temperature is very different. Its only in the 30’s-40’sF outside and I have been keeping the tent up around 80-83F.
I cant afford a real humidifier, and my few DIY attempts to force the RH up have been mostly useless.
It occurred to me when I first started HPA, that I have a source of hi humidity air in my root chamber. Its going to always be very close to 100% at around 70F. The problem with using that air is it would dry out the root chamber, and/or let light in, both of which would harm the roots. So I have not done that. My experiments with just leaving and opening between the chamber and tent did very little to change the RH in the tent.
The new seedlings are still in the perlite hempy’s, so I decided to try to raise the RH and lower the VPD in the tent again by blowing air down into one net pot hole and leaving the other two net pot holes uncovered while the nozzles run. That got me about 3-5% raise in RH. Then I lowered the temps from 80-83 down to 73-77. That made a bigger difference bumping the RH up another 10 points.
The combination of higher humidity and lower temps has improved the VPD a bunch. Its gone from being in the far red zone to almost in the green zone.
I was expecting/hoping that would keep the seedlings happier, but there is still almost zero signs of growth over the last 12 hours or so.
Im going to give them a bit longer then say screw it and put them in the chamber. I dont want to waste any more time.
Ive been considering something like that for a long time, but reviews have always talked about the disks failing fairly quickly due to calcium deposits building up. It made the long term use seem pretty $$ if you factor in replacement discs.
How is your experience with that problem? Do you use distilled water or?
I’ve used RO water with mine and have replaced the disk once after about a year of use (it came with three replacements). It runs pretty much continuously.
IIRC, you use textile inner chamber and evaporation, do you? Isn’t it possible to extend upper part of the tent a little to allow air with moisture go up into your tent?
Yes, and that did work a little, but it dried out the root chamber too much by the time I raised the RH in the tent enough to do me any good. Lowering the temperature in the upper tent worked much better.
However, you just gave me an idea. There are two sections to my lower root chamber area. One is inside the fabric pots, where the roots grow. The other area is outside the fabric pots, between the fabric pot and the outer foam insulation. That area should also be at hi relative humidity because thats where the water that evaporates from the fabric pot goes.
Its worth an experiment, so I just stuck one of my temp/humidity gauges in there to see whats up.
I kind of lost track of time. I was thinking that at least 9 or 10 days had passed since I popped these Dragon Breath seeds, but its only one week, so they were not doing as badly as I thought. They are still behind where the Earth Lover were at this stage, and Ive seen virtually zero growth the last two days.
I think they were stalled, so I pulled them from the hempy’s and put them in the root chamber. The three that made it are not as dramatically different in size as with the previous plants.
Here are some baseline pics for future comparisons.
Right now I am over misting heavily. Thats partly to help them transition and partly to get them growing down toward the floor right off the bat. This time I plan to just let them go to the floor and see how they handle it.
Had a little post-birthday party yesterday so that my comment wasn’t clear enough, sorry
Didn’t post any updates so far just because there is nothing to tell about: I’ve bought a lot of stuff like nozzles, valves, pressure regulators, solenoids, microcontrollers, relays and so on, but these are way too far from me yet and should arrive at the end of the month at best. At the same time I didn’t buy a compressor yet (but this I’m going to take at my city) and have decided nothing about the lights.
Really don’t want to spend a lot on that and at the same time want to have decent option able to give my plants enough light. I’ve read in some studies that it has no any sense to have more than 800-1200 umol/sec for strawberry, and that it should have 19-20 mol DLI (but this one is just a post on a forum). So don’t know does it worth to buy something like Spider Farmer SF2000 ($290 in US plus delivery plus import taxes = ~$360-400 here which is pretty much for me) or stripes + drives from budget lights topic (didn’t find any PAR measures there though) or even a bunch of diods and make it myself from the very scratch. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find original lm301b’s here though and how many of what color do I need to get a good enough PAR. I also don’t have a quantum sensor to measure par diapason/ppfd of my own light in the last case and the sensor cost is too high to buy it at this stage.
LOL Even when I misunderstood your comment, the idea got through
It was a good idea, but it turns out that the humidity in that section is still too low to do me any good. I was surprised by the low humidity. I think its because I have a lot of air flow through that part of the chamber - fresh room air coming in, getting heated, then flowing out again.
I could increase the humidity in that part of the chamber, but I would have to reduce the air flow. That might work while things are cold, but not once things start to warm up later in the year.
The other problem is that the largest air exit for that area is buried at the back of the root chamber - where I cant get to it without tearing out the fabric pot. I just cant reach it any other way at the moment, so any modifications will have to wait till this grow is over.
I cant help much with that - I dont know what strawberries would like compared to cannabis. On the other hand, all plants like bright sunlight, so I doubt its all that different. I also feel like those cheap strips would be more than “close enough” to get you started. I dont think you will be able to tell a significant difference in growth between the expensive option and the cheap strips. I bet it would be hard to measure. I would give them all the light they can handle without burning, for the least amount of dollars - but I am cheap
Minor up-date - all is well Im glad I transferred them to the system. Within a very short time they started to look better. The leaves perked right up and they look much happier now. The roots and the leaves are growing again and developing nicely.
Timing is now 0.7 ON x 50 OFF. The roots are going for the floor, starting to put out side branches, and starting to develop some fuzzy hairs. All of which is just about perfect for this stage.
Its interesting to me that the roots still look very different from one plant to the next, while the leaves, and over all size this time are much more uniform - no dramatic runt or big sister. It will be interesting to see how this works out this time.
Day 10 Another not much is happening - which is mostly good - post.
Im mostly into LITFA now. The plants are happy and growing. The roots show more dramatic changes/growth than the leaves, but both look good.
Here are some comparison pics from 3 days ago to this morning. I still find the differences between the three very interesting. All of them are starting to show some fuzzy hairs, but its not dramatic yet.
Baby #1 only has shorter roots so far but lots of them, and they are all more or less the same length.
Baby #2 is already starting to look for the nearest nozzle off to the right side. The roots show a definite tendency to grow in that direction. This plant has roots that are a mix of the other two - it has one medium long tap root developing, plus a mess of smaller roots spreading out from the net pot. Some fuzzy hairs showing.
Nothing special going on with the leaves. They are all more or less similar in size, and the leaves are getting bigger, but the over all plants are not that much taller so far. if this goes like last time, things will start to take off after the roots get larger and better adapted tot he new environment.
I have reluctantly decided that the mist quality is significantly better at 7 PSI than at 5 PSI, so thats where I have it set now. I have been focused on saving air to reduce cycle times on the compressor, but its more important to have good hang times with good droplet sizes. I think 7 PSI is much closer to the ideal than 5 PSI. I did a new short video showing the current timing - 0.7 ON x 55 OFF.
I’ve decided to give a shot for this one from Alibaba. The title is “High Quality Diy Kit HLG Samsung Lm301b Full Spectrum Led Grow Light Quantum Board”. 240W. 40 reviews, 4.9 stars. Very similar to other boards based on Samsung lm301b’s, but as cheap as dirt: $103 and $53 - delivery to my country ($37 to the US). I’ve chosen an 3K + 660nm option.
I tried to calculate a DIY lights with comparable specs and it had pretty much higher cost. Let’s see! Hope they’ll send it before Chinese new year holidays.
Sounds like you have most of the parts you need ordered. Have you picked out an air compressor? If you dont need one of the super quiet ones, that should save some money.
I am really looking forward to seeing how your sprayers work, and how the final system comes together.
Early yesterday I changed the timing from 0.7 x50 to 0.7 x 60. By early today there were signs of air trimming, so that was too dry a setting. Even so, there are significantly more fuzzy hairs now. That tells me the mist distribution isnt quite ideal. I decided to change to 0.9x60. Im hoping a longer ON cycle will fill the chamber better. I will have to see if the fuzzy’s keep developing or stall.
It a kind of localized chinese compressor, at least it has local warranty and it is possible to buy it here in local stores.
The name is Patriot WO 24-160, its an oil-free compressor, it has 160 l/m intake performance (96 l/m outtake, or around so) and 24 liters air receiver (tank). And 54 dB sound pressure, so its pretty quite. It costs around $130. There is slightly cheaper alternatives available, like $10-$20 less, but they are much louder, the price difference is not high enough.
There is an option to have a heavier but oil lubricated compressors for almost the same price, but I don’t want to risk having oil on roots. I believe 96 l/m performance is good enough for the beginning.
I think all the ones I was considering back then were super cheap ebay versions.
