Dry Down/Back strategies

very thorough @Fuel, thanks for taking the time. lots to digest here.

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Excellent education @Fuel. Lots to process. Thank you.

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@zezozose I was looking at FloraFlexā€™s website and saw they have two grow guides, a standard how-to for new growers and then this interesting very detailed one for pros and enthusiasts. They call it ā€œBurn and Turnā€ and make some big claims for shorter lifecycles with the same yields and quality, not outrageous given what we know about crop steering potential in cannabis and the power of managing drybacks and EC in a high-frequency fertigation system. Check it out, itā€™s a little over my head as a soil grower who hand waters but I think Iā€™m liking the idea and want to study it more, Iā€™m always interested in the opinion of the pros, thereā€™s some great guides and white papers out there for propagation and greenhouse management from companies like Grodan, Dramm and others that service the pro nursery and farming industries:

https://www.grodan.com/learning/root-zone-irrigation-management/

grodan192091-whitepapers-campagne-ttā€”2ā€”steering-and-control-of-ec-and-wc-in-the-slab-under-summer-conditionsā€”a4ā€”eng.pdf (697.9 KB)

grodan202126-whitepapers-campagne-ttā€”1ā€”monitoring-nutrient-balance-phā€“ec-in-the-root-zoneā€”a4ā€”eng.pdf (320.6 KB)

understanding-and-steering-the-root-zone-environmentā€”eng.pdf (1.1 MB)

Grodan_Whitepaper_Movement-of-water-through-plants_V1_EN.pdf (1.1 MB)

Grodan_Whitepaper_Making-informed-decisions-in-respect-to-water-and-EC-management_V1_EN.pdf (1.3 MB)

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Beautiful,this could apply to Coco with HFF too,but roockwool cubes are the best media for this approach
@Dirt_Wizard

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good stuff!! thanks @Dirt_Wizard

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I think the question is ultimately what does ā€œutmost potentialā€ mean to a particular grower? Is it yield by graded flower weight or by grams of cannabinoids extracted? Or is it potency, or scent, or flavor, or effects?

From my reading and experiences with hand watering peat-based high-perlite organic mixes, the flowering dryback stress causes more expression of terpenes building scent and flavor along with the resin building thatā€™s usually given as the reason. Versus the rootbuilding effects of vegetative stress, both of which I find to need mitigation in an organic medium with some replacement of microbial and fungal life in the root zone. When I deliberately let my pots dry down to fairly light, I make the first watering afterwards fairly heavy, and highly active with cultures as well as a saponifier/wetting agent.

For me that usually means either a compost tea, Recharge, a myco/azos/bacillus type powder, LABS, or Photosynthesis Plus (PSB/PSNB) and then some AgSil, aloe, fulvic, coconut water, PureCrop1 or Castile soap as the wetting agent, one of these days Iā€™ll actually buy a big bag of yucca or quijalla.

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I read the Floraflex brochure, some good info. I see they go to a 10/14 light schedule at the end, I might give that a try sometime. Otherwise it seems the biggest time savings they propose is to start with a 6-8ā€ clone. That does tend to shorten your cycle :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:. They also claim you donā€™t need a veg space, so I guess that means they assume you are buying rooted clones.

Itā€™s good info but also a bit of marketing fluff. But isnā€™t it all? Thanks for sharing, had not seen that one.

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