I’m in the long boring dog-days of flower right now.
But we do have beans growing on the Cool Runnings crew. So far I see one bean only on one of the Sour Strawberries (I’m sure there’s a few more).
It looks like my light calculations were off (on the high side of course…)
I’m getting some foxtailing and light stress but all considered, it looks successful
(plenty of items to improve on & don’t count the beans before they ripen).
Part of my protocol (Ver. 0.1 in development) is to take clones of the parent plants.
For the Cool Runnings project this happened Jan 13, 2021.
Jan 13. I took one lower branch of each plant (typically node 2) and fired up my cloner for the inaugural run.
After a couple weeks we had roots (8 out of 8). That was interesting, you wait and wait for the roots to develop and when they do ~ Boom, lots of roots!
The rooted clones were transplanted into 5.5” pots & installed in my temporary clone mother set-up. The lights were selected for vegging so way over powered, but with the dimming option, they are knocked down to about 10% power, that’s about 3K lux at 10~11” canopy level. (running 18/6)
The object of this exercise is to see how slow I can go and still have them healthy.
After thinking and researching about optimal mother structures. I pruned them all leaving about 3 nodes on the main stem. Letting the side branches slowly grow and taking cuts (all viable for more clones but fed to the worms) I always leave one node attached to the structure as a future bud site.
To recap: 3 nodes (6 bud sites) on the main stem, each side branch trimmed also has a node (2 bud sites).
The tops I had cut off initially, I used to experiment with simple cloning (threw them into a glass of water, 2 out of 4 rooted)
Last week I tweaked the lights up to 6K lux for a week to see the response. The response was rapid growth!
So I dialed the lights back to 3k lux. NOTE: this translates to 3.3 watts per square foot.
Here we are 10 weeks since cutting with the current photo, about 11“ tall and ‘itching to put the pedal down’…
I have both males and females here. I have learned to keep an eyeball on the males as they like to pop pre-flowers.
Keeping the lights low dramatically slows the growth and minimizes water & nutriment requirements. They are not quite frozen in stasis but close! The cool thing is when you want cuttings just up the lights for a week or two. Then slow them back down. Next question is how long can I keep the mothers going at this level?
Hey, just reading your issues and problem solving as I may be having some similar… in trying not to exhaust much to keep your humidity up, how do you keep your temps down?
I am currently testing my setup and if I don’t exhaust my temps sky rocket to like 110F+ (still goin up/testing)… this is only at approx 33K lux also
Keeping the temps down in the lung room (spare bedroom) has been an ongoing set of skirmishes
I get a lot of sun on that wall; there is 2" of reflective insulation in the window to keep that from becoming a solar cooker.
I’ve added 2 passive cold air return vents into a closet wall (one up high) to keep the heat from pooling.
The hot air vent is completely blocked right now. Air comes in under the door.
When the A/C comes on I’ll open that vent up wide.
The light I built has the drivers external to the tent (30~50 watts of heat)
When I installed the AC Infinity, I used insulated ducts in order to keep the heat from leaking into the lung room. The sound deadening is just bonus.
I think I could run in the summer now (last year was too hot, larfy buds) we’ll see!
In hindsight, setting up in the basement would have made better sense thermally.
In the wold of fans, back-pressure is right after CFM in importance. The mixed flow fans (Infinity, Vortex, etc) handle back-pressure better than axial (cpu fans).
Fun fact: one foot of the ‘slinky’ style flexible ducting we all use is equal (in air resistance) to 10 feet of sheet metal duct of the same diameter.
For your setup a 4" AC Infinity is more than enough… Unless you are thinking of expansion down the road.
Here’s some data I generated when playing with mine.
Where the Infinity ‘really shines’ is the controller… both temp & RH regulated
Your RH has a tendency to spike after lights-out due to falling temps. This can lead to mould issues in later flower.
My setup right now is max temp = 82F, min temp = off, Max RH = 53%, min RH = off
max alarm temp = 85F, max alarm RH = 58%. fan on setting = 4
(82F sounds high but my leaf temps are 74 ~ 76F)
So what happens?
During the day the fan regulates the temp to 82F by changing the fan speed from 0 to 4 (slow change in speed as it ramps up and down) at night, the max RH is controlling the fan.
Why is there a max setting and max alarm setting?
That’s the safety net!
If the temps creep up past 82F (fan running at 4) when it hits 85F the fan shifts to level 10
Belt and suspenders
No surprise my recommendation is “get a AC Infinity”. Even though you don’t need it, I’d suggest a 6" as this will allow you greater flexibility later if you decide to reconfigure your grow areas. The 6" pushes twice the air flow (400CFM vs 200CFM) for 30$ more.
Lately I’ve been looking at Infinity’s Cabinet fan systems.
(been thinking about building a 2’ x 4’ x 7’ cabinet)
Specifically, the ‘Controller 8’, it handles 4 zones (4 separate sensors) and 30W of fan per section.
They tell you their fans are custom… …sort of, not really
I have experienced all of that. At first I had no ducting and about 1” between cpu fans and carbon filters; that made the fans essentially push the air backwards lol
I then added ducting which allowed my setup to push/pull sufficiently actually
So I think here possibly lies my issue. Are those settings for a flower room? It seems a lil dry on the VPD scale for veg no?
And so back to my issue, if wanting a higher RH, basically the more I turn on the fans to cool things down, then I lose the RH.
Fortunately for me I’m running a cap mat setup which def helps with the RH, and I just added a baby humidifier so I’ll see if I can now exhaust more (I put my cpu fans on a pwm, lowest setting for now) without the sacrifice). So far, my low light propagation/early veg is looking fine now, but the later veg may be an issue.
Maybe I’m shooting for too high of an RH.
Right now my low light setting, I got approx 82F and 82% RH, so that I can prob play with in either direction just by simply venting more/less (*this usually effect the rh more tho, or faster I should prob say)
Haven’t tested the high lux scenario with new humidifier yet tho, but I have my doubts.
I have some cheap rh/temp controllers and in fact I think I will employ two on timers (day/night settings) that control the intake/exhaust fans together.
I may or may not hook my humidifier into the controller as well but I have to give that more thought (might have to make a normally closed connection so it turns off when it goes above X% when the fans then turn on, or, maybe a simpler setup where the temp control is tied to the fans and the Rh control does the humidifier?)
I’m all for that (overkill/expansion options later modo ) except I have prob 20+ cpu fans that were gifted to me so trying to make use of them.
Yes, I’m in late flower. I was running 65% during veg.
I could regulate the tent as low as setting 2 (during cooler temps in the lung room) & the RH was only minimally affected (-5%). I was shocked how little power it required, My previous setup was pulling 22W & I thought that was good, setting #2 is pulling 2 watts… Now I’m running at #4, that’s 7 watts.
It is the volume of air moved that will affect the RH & being a smaller volume that will swing quicker (and recover quicker).
I’m thinking your filter is adding significant back-pressure to your exhaust fan, I’d suggest an experiment, try disconnecting the filter and see how it affects temp. and RH (assuming the plants aren’t too stinky yet). I doubt it will directly help the RH but if you can get to a reasonable on/off duty cycle the RH will have an opportunity to recover during the off cycle.
Don’t ditch those computer fans, they are great for stirring the air in the grow environment.
Ok, I like the idea of revisiting the duty cycle, maybe I could increase my temp control on/off range and increase fan speed (before trying to remove the filter; it’s not stink but I’m looking down the road a bit)…
I believe you are correct and it might be a good strategy to sort of take a min to get the temps down and just sacrifice the RH for that moment as it should bounce back faster than the temps… the only thing is, my box is made out of foam insulation, so it might tend to hold that temp a lil better than a tent…
Also an update, as my lights got hotter, the fan (at lowest pwm setting) has stayed on and now it’s seems pretty stable at 82F and 65% RH coincidentally lol
I broke a small branch while pollinating, such that it had only a tiny flap of skin still connecting it to the stem. Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on it as it looked like a great tester bud. I harvested on the 9th and hung it in the tent for a couple days.
When vaping, there’s a noticeable burr in the back of the throat, as you would expect from uncured weed but the flavour is really mild. Scissoring up some for the glass pipe to compare smoking to vaping. Much harsher smoking. Again, no discernible flavour, I think vaping is the way to test, no combustion products.
Disclaimer: I stressed the hell out of them so they really need to be grown properly for the best evaluation.
The high is strong, peaky & clear headed. About a 2.5 Hr Buzz and a second bowl hits like the first and it’s a creeper. Definitely ‘idea’ weed… I could see tapping this a few times through out the day. Not for night use if you have any sleep issues.
At the top, you get that face distortion feeling, like your tongue is subtly thicker and your facial muscles are super relaxed.
Cyberpunk showed a smaller decrease in hand – eye coordination & fine muscle control than expected. Higher level mission planning – off line.
It took me 2 days to smoke that bud…
I clipped & trimmed the 3 colas reserved for smoke testing and they are drying (above the lights) right now. There’s two phenos presenting, a green and a maroon (both have red stems).
Getting very close to bean harvest, like a kid waiting for Christmas…
Awesome looking Sour Strawberry … Is this a strain that typically turn purple?
Also do you know if the 6" AC Infiniti fan is physically larger size then the 4"? That’s my next tent “upgrade” for my 3x3… Wondering if the 6" is crazy overkill on 3x3
All I can say is I’m 2 for 2 on the red petioles. These are F3s so they are showing variation.
They like LST. You can do HST but carefully. They are busting out nugs all the way down.
They have great potential for a manifold, Veg some extra so it will grow to a good size thru flower. They will fill in…
I recall reading that but it had slipped below conscious memory TBA
I could see a 6" in some scenarios, carbon filter, long run of flex tubing, fighting a temperature problem.
But looking at the numbers: 6 " fan = 400 CFM… 63 Cu ft. for tent volume so 6 air changes. Now that’s max.
I noticed this when I tried a sample of my sssdh mom, no taste and no smell at all… guess when they’re fully pollinated they don’t give you any terps at all…
Mild and hemp taste almost.
Hope the others have some nice terps and a kick to them @Gpaw
) is to take clones of the parent plants.
) except I have prob 20+ cpu fans that were gifted to me so trying to make use of them.
… Is this a strain that typically turn purple?
