@zezozose so, let’s say you have two clones, one kept optimally healthy while the other received “precision stress”
My opinion, the precision stressed one will likely exhibit more aroma, may be visually more frosty and marginally more potent when smoked.
I need to seriously work on dialing my plants needs in. I cant wait until i can grow a decent size in a 1 gal.
I need to learn how to feed my plants properly and not over water. That seems to be my biggest issue is i dont feed enough and i water too much
It’s not such a huge challenge. Your plants will tell you what they need. Sometimes I far exceed manufacturers directions depending on what I think they need but it’s rare.
It’s very hard to overwater a good sized plant in 1g
Anyone wanting to focus on “dialing in” their plants/grows
Might I suggest, learn to grow in coco coir? --you only focus on the plant’s needs, and always make sure your water has food in it, and you water to runoff. That’s it 
no worries of overwatering, no worries about soil health or nutrient content. Also no drybacks required which makes coco growing even easier
Once you’ve aced that, then move onto either peat or go fully organic/living soil
I am seriously considering the switch. I just would hate to abandon the organic growing after all my time and money is invested.
I even have 5 cuft of living soil cooking outback. I was planning on running some SIPS i even made 3 of them and walked away from that plan and went back to organic bottles. Im all over the place lol so im forcing myself to get the organic bottle growing down then ill jump to living soil SIP
Beautiful,I have some pics of Monsters in tiny Coco 250ml cups.
With Hydro it Is really possible to grow Monsters in small pots,also,the smaller the pot the Better.I have a link to One post of mine,look at the roots development in 1 liter pot vs 1 gallon
Your roots are nice @Andrexl , I’ve seen your grows 
.
Challenge I have with “smaller is always better” is, for example, the Bogbubble I posted above. I couldn’t get through a 12 hour night without watering during dark. And I really don’t like doing that for a variety of reasons.
@Fuel, thanks! Fantastic point-by-point breakdown.
How do you “obtain a massive root core without it”? Is it mainly through Silicon supplementation? How about those trichoderma? Mycos? I’ve seen many who use Recharge et al throughout their hydro grows, but this always seemed wasteful to me.
Just looking for that extra edge, “fine tuning” as you put it - and usually lacking that “massive” rootball, this seemed a good place to start.
In plain bloody sesh with buddies, let me answer to this rightly with photos ;o) Evening. Stay green.
About what I do
Yeah I usually do coco and perlite but this go round I did promix I’m going back to coco next grow and I’ll stick with coco
I’ll add a little info on what im doing and my reasoning’s
First was kinda following athena’s protocol for dry back and crop steering.
Saying that ive had to change it to suit my system and to keep it more simplified.
What i changed to is that my first watering event is 30mins after lights on and that repeats every 20-30mins up to a set amount of watering events that i determine or till a hard cutoff which is dictated by a “master” timer that controls the power of my watering timers for a specified time “4:30am-12pm atm”.
Now due to being only timer based and no water sensor’s my goal is to reach and pass saturation forcing a little run off on the last couple watering events at the end of my water timers “powered on window” which has a build up and subsequent saturation up to that point then will allow a dry back to occur for the last half or so of the day and to dry back further during lights off till the cycle starts over again.
The advantages ive seen with avoiding lights off watering of just a consistently repeating watering cycle is that i dont get the soggy root situation and eventual root rot that would occur otherwise, also during the dry back times is when the roots are expanding out the most it seems even if my root volume is greatly restricted.
Other advantages ive noticed is reduced water usage "which there is another factor at play for that as well " and subsequently lower humidity.
Oh and for reference im in coco, and as for EC with my feed changes im not having to watch as close as i use to about my reservoir levels as one the dry back and method of EC stacking ive just noticed the plants are more apt at handling a wide range of EC levels vs when i was consistently feeding and forcing runoff on repeated cycles through the day.
Like i feed at a High 2.5-2.7ec now depending on the growth stage, but my remaining res volume which includes run off is typically a good 1.0ec higher than that if not more as the volume decreases, ive hit 7.5EC yeah 7.5 in the remnants which would be who knows how much higher in the media and the plants a the time continued on without concern with minor signs they were feeding so high.
heres a snipit of crop steering from the athena’s handbook
Athena_Crop_Steering.pdf (2.4 MB)
I’m feeding about 2.2EC (Jacks) out of the reservoir and here’s a snapshot of one of my slabs right now. I know these EC readings don’t correlate 100% with water readings, but it’s illustrative of what goes on. You can see where I watered at 3:15pm and the EC moved inversely to the water content. As my slabs dry overnight the EC # will continue to rise until tomorrow when I bring it back down with fertigations.
Anyway, point being, that’s another thing about drybacks, they can really drive your EC up high.
I can speak to living soil. Soil naturally dries out, and microorganisms in soil can go dormant and come back so there’s no real downside to letting your living soil dry out. Except that worms may die, etc., and bringing microorganisms back from hibernation causes time delays and probably reduced yield.
That said it’s not my experience that living soil has to be moist all the time. I solve problems occasionally by letting it dry to wilt, and I like to get “mostly dry” occasionally. Full dessication is the only thing I try to avoid.
What i ment by that is i know as my medium drys back ec goes up, but also whats in the media is typically higher than your feed water, so 2.7ec feed mean 2.7+ in the media, i just haven’t measured as really i can only measure run off and then still guess.
so that 7.5ec res water i saw who know what the media was like 8-9-10ec ???
Oh - sorry, I’m pretty willfully clueless about those things.
Is It only me having less EC in runoff than going in?
Since I started using canna Coco I Ve had this result
Fertigate 3 times at day with 0.7 EC included calmag(Ro water)
Lower EC than going in.
I usually get slight deficiency of calcium and Nitrogen,very weird
I usually fertigate till the values are the same but It Always tends to be less than nutrient solution
@Tripl3fastaction
Yeah, was trying to agree in my wordy way . I see media EC anywhere from 2x to 5x my feed EC, depending on how dry the media is. But that’s after “stacking” EC some. If you are pushing runoff in a recirculating system there’s usually minimal difference between feed and media EC.
The EC numbers I’m throwing out above aren’t runoff numbers, but there is some correlation.
As to your situation, depending on your lighting, I’d up the feed significantly. i feed Jacks at minimum EC of about 1.5 after they are 2-3 weeks old. Flower I’m 2.0 + EC.
I’d up the feed some, and go a day or two without pushing runoff. That’ll help you stack your EC in the medium a bit. See how they react and go from there. It’s clear they are eating based on your numbers, im guessing they’d eat more if offered.
Your program now is basically a daily flush, if they don’t like it, flush them out and try something different. Beauty of hydro. Good luck
@Tripl3fastaction you’re cheating in this discussion lol, your setup is just dope and you cracked the rosetta stone of Jacks ^^
@zezozose, i’m a bit baked forgive me if i’m drifting, i will tempt something anyway. I’ve to decompose a bit the considerations, because it’s freaking hard without a plant in hand to explain these things. There is a lot of “manual” things to consider, moisture feeled, textures, density, also textures/shines of the roots themselves, weight … but no fear ^^
To best handle my comments, you have to know the inherent biases of who is writing it. It’s not so to be fair, but also to best help you to handle what I’ve to say on the subject. I’ve saw enough spaces here and there to say straight that each lab have it’s own rule and it’s own ruler. Even in using the same tech.
1 - My favorite medium in frequency and quantity is cheap soil. Seedlings soil (very light NPK) with perfect clay content (knife in one bag, palm/ball test, if the ball is round but don’t handle the form 10 seconds : perfect). And strictly nothing else, just maybe sometimes nettles compost. I love it for my plants, but too lazy to make it an habit.
2 - My favorite medium overall is coco coir. My ego love it too. But supply here is problematic both in term of quality and constant availability, I’ve been in the shit too many times the last decades with it to return to it without a serious equipment to treat it and recycle it in loop (industrial micro wave, steam washer, drying, compressing).
3 - In hydro, my interest is limited to (true) NFT. But i hate to regulate PH. I literally hate it.
4 - Started outdoor, guerrilla. Then greenhouse. Then pure indoor. All the rage of the last transition, you bet, was about the PH regulation. So i learned how to refuse it. I preferred to adapt my plants to grow PH free than the reverse. A while ago ^^
5 - My nutes are expensive in general and hated by hipsters in general too. But it’s not a religion for me, at the moment the stuff kick within 48hrs and that it can let zero traces in the vegetal mass, i change brands like shirts.
6 - I don’t recycle anything because the chain to set is complicated in my actual location, to reach my level of exigence with it. It’s not that i don’t want to.
It’s a matter of context first. Dry cycles was always a thing for me, so i don’t really understand when people want to give it a name. Now what i call dry is not a plant ready to die with dead roots to wash with zyms each week, but the minimal tension to keep the plant and its leaves productive.
Like this by example. If you’re not screening for herms the fucked genetic of the biggest seedbank of the world, it doesn’t have any sense to do it.
Building dense cores with a non-constant moisture is pretty much mechanical in fact and is mostly piloted by the number and the timing of your transplantations. Of course you have to adapt each time and to know what you do but it’s not necessary doing something special that desserve a name.
The real pivot point to understand is the high importance of the seedling stage for the future core. Even with clones. No, even more critical with clones ^^
The best trap i can find is recent, you’re seeing two AK47 of the same line, direct producer (SS). They had the same conditions but outputted two different results (because phenos). And that’s something you can’t really get only in photo, the weight (soil+root) comparison and the density comparison matter a lot.
Counter-intuitively, the first had a shitty root mass. The roots passed their time to wrap the medium without filling it. Making it “kind of hollow”.
The second was excellent, just a solid block of roots ready to explode more in the next volume (X10) of the sequence.
I’ve not used a root booster with them to don’t streamline the reading, and that’s the captain obvious trick when you don’t really mind about it : getting a good root booster for this step increase drastically the speed of the colonization and streamline all plants with dense core.
The (old) Root Excellurator was just fire, but it’s non sense to rush it just because i thrown the reference. The root booster you’re using have to be compliant with your whole line / method of feeding. Or it’s just wasting money, and the real booster i’m talking about are never cheap in general.
When i’ve my own safe F1 or safe clones and that i want a good ride for my ego, i almost burn the fresh seedlings/clones with it with no other food. To the first deficiencies for the more root-lazy lines.
It’s generally to reach this point (coco coir example). You can’t insert a knife in it without stabbing it.
It’s always less dense in soil (but not to understand “less good”), with the dynamic of water tensions and the retention are very different. And no, i never mix the twos specially for this. With dry cycles with mixed soil/coco you’re just creating patchs that slower the process.
For a soil reference, this one is decent. You can throw it at the face of a dutch that consider paper towel germination as a NASA thing, it will make the effect of a punch of a kid. One more time don’t be impressed by the comparison, it’s not the same game at all. Not better, not worse in both sense … just totally different mediums and constraints.
And guess what, when you stab the root mass to see what’s inside … here we go : the seedling hard core again, from where everything is densified at 360°.
Another trap, the strain itself. She no longer dig as fast and strong than 20 years ago, but the density still there. You can grap firmly the soil block, press, it stay homogen. And when you cut it, you discover an homogeneous density.
Enough for the basics, and to show the traps to only judge by the visual aspect of roots you don’t really care : the one used to colonize only, and not to ramify from the center.
Not at all. A good balanced Si amendment permit to reinforce the “roots borers” to make them dig faster, deeper and stronger. More for the anchor, but in a greenhouse or guerrilla it indirectly help the plant to fill it.
It’s like coating with diamond sand the tip of the said roots (where Si is concentrated in the root mass), like
electric drill bits. If your soil is hard, too much clay, many little stones etc … it help a lot during all the vegetative stage.
Newcomers have to take it count that at this point of tunning, it’s razor edge. The frontier to make it counterproductive is very thin : too hard stems that buds have a hard time to colonize, good stretch anihilated … to name a couple of symptoms of abuses.
Yeah i close the loop, this fucking amnezia haze still kicking hard after only three blunts. So now the case that is not my comfort zone at all : living soil.
My personal option, as Captain Obvious maybe for some : it have non sense for me in term of performances to grow in constant RH and on the “pretty much high moisture side of the force” … if your soil is not full of life. Like a fucking unstoppable free party.
If you don’t choose the O² way for your root mass, you have to choose strong soil dynamics to maximize. In term of nutrients i know the brand is not very understood and the marketing lefty, but NFTG enter totally in this vein. They are opposite to what i’m using, the nutes have to set in soil and work in it to release the stuff. Apply a dry cycle, and you’re just good to wash it and restart again. That’s the purpose of the “slurry test” they harass their users to do.
To work the seedlings for hard cores with this kind of stuff it’s not big deal : bottom feeding and knowing well your medium retention. Can’t tell a perfect moisture level, 10% in a soil full of peat and 10% in a soil screened fine with zero bonus are totally different for the plant. Even for the PH, that need to be rockstable in this configuration if not autodialed by life or tricks (specific topping or whatever you fools use lol).
They enter totally in this scenario of a “wet” stability and long release nutes. And it’s more than advised if you want to densify the root mass as fuck. And pointless with dry cycles, obviously.
Tricho by example shouldn’t be considered as a root booster, because they are not. They are supplementing the colonization in creating “highway” or “rails” and ease the densification. Like i don’t know, the Japanese high speed train. Smooth, less efforts, fast.
Killing it is easy (wasting precious time more, but you get the idea) : caustic acidity or/and dryness ^^ So if you use cheap mineral nutes and water every three days, it’s pointless.
Now nothing force you to don’t think outside the box and to don’t think your roots in multi-layers. Hemp is a powerful depollutant of soils, even tested successfully at Tchernobyl lol It’s not without reason and cannabis inherit this great quality.
It can take various forms, like using the soil juice to buffer treated rockwool by example.
I digress mostly to say that if you search a recipe to apply, specifically for no inert medium … you’re gonna have a hard ride. Being creative is necessary to adapt your goal with your choices in term of strategy.
And i’m talking about a “normal grow for me” (look in up my biases) using a few limited volumes. Use beds and it change the game again, even if you still use soil. Because you simply builded a greenhouse below your artificial lights.
I had one friend that loved it, not very talkative on his techs but that obtain carpets of roots lol Litterally. This sick guy was creating a 4 inches square like you make a cement surface with a pool plastic, filled it with a supersoil and putted a 4x4 on it with holes on the bottom cut only to place plants. For the watering he just used cheap porous foam tubes burried in soil. The thing you can buy in all garden supply.
All ways lead to Rome ^^
If you’re talking about the “Real Growers” tabs, i agree. But it’s not a popular opinion at all ^^ In hydro, nothing beat aquaponics to play this way. It even suppress the need to regulate PH and to disturb plants with regulators.
Now, it can make sense in layering the colonization of the roots. I’ve never pushed that far hydro, but technically it can be a nice car to ride. Like DWC but with two floors, it’s not hard to make climb roots and keep both solution separated. We have all known clogged pumps and feeding tubes because colonized by “tracing” roots … i’m sure it’s possible but damn what a long cycle to handle ^^ I like to make as many round as i can in a year personally, even for just weed.
In hydro anyway, a good root booster is far enough to have too many roots. It’s totally outside the equation in term of density, you just grow virtually unlimited. The best other leverage you can find in this game anyway is just a strain built for hydro. No real gravity constraints etc …
I’m sure i forgot the half of what i wanted to write, but the blunts of Amnezia Haze are in the second phase now. And it’s a mess. Hell yeah i’ve not even talked about level of auxins (important for roots colonization) also, and the 24/0 (because stoners have the tendance to think with cannabis “night=roots”, which is very wrong ^^).
I guess i’ve thrown enough bricks in all senses to take a good start in the searches, if not … ask Ed ^^
