FieldEffect's Attempt to Grow Indoors

[FieldEffect]

The plants looked perky this morning both the “up-potted” and the seedlings. I went ahead and moved the other two 907 seedlings into 3" cubes as well. I had seriously underestimated the roots present that may have been a good bit of the problem.

The Runtz x Sour Bubbles all above media, showing leaves and 3 have already shed their helmets. They are just getting cal-mag water for the moment.

Ordered the PH60 and EC60 as seperate units.

Also ordered the Photobio PAR. I’ll be posting a seperate thread comparing all the options to a rented Apogee. I think the benefit to the community is tangible enough that I’ll spend some time demonstrating the options in direct comparison on both my homebrew veg lights as well as my XS1500 flower light. iPhone Photone, Android Photone, BT Lux Meter (UNI-T) in conjunction with PPFD app, Photobio, and the Apogee 510.

@Nitt I wish the same! I could borrow your Apogee too and that investigation would have ended as soon as it started I think the interference issue is electrically mitigateable.

@NoCal the replacement probe cost was one of the first things I considered. It seemed reasonable to me but I’ll go the independant route. Really minor cost differential and I can keep them in truely optimal conditions (EC dry, PH wet).

Thanks guys!

[FieldEffect]

Watered the bigger seedlings this morning with the 0.8 EC veg solution. Light is about 50-60% bright at around 10-12", we’ll have numbers soon. They look much happier. The last time they got water was about 36 hours ago.

I really like this media. Nice stuff. I see why people use it. So tidy, and holds quite a bit of moisture.

Also watered the Runtz x Sour Bubble hatchlings, these are getting hydration every day with the dome off. Light about 9" away 40-50% bright.

One of the benefits of spending more money than I’ll ever think is reasonable on the new pantry shelving is that I got some of the cheap shelves we used to use in there for my closet. Nice and organized now, everything barely fits but I can still open both sides and have reasonable access.

Veg side I can barely get a propagation tray in and out but it fits fine and works nice. It’s not like I ever fit in there well anyway.

Flower side.

Cheers and have a great day guys! Appreciate all the advice, I feel like it takes a couple days to trickle through my tough skull. But the plants are happier now and I feel better getting things more tidied up in there.

[FieldEffect]

They’re going pretty quick now. The 907 crosses are about 2 weeks old today. Overall dramatically improved health and vigor. Some fat little leaves on the 907xNL#1

I’m starting to water the Runtz x Sour Bubble seedlings ~25% dilution (0.2 EC), the larger plants in 3" cubes are taking 0.8 EC veg-ratio Megacrop 2-part. I didn’t want to mix more cal-mag for the babies so they got equivalent-strength veg sauce. Maybe this is a better taper plan anyway they’ll be heading into 3" cubes this weekend

With the LEDs turned down there’s less heat going on on the veg side, so I turned on the heat mats on both tiers, lowest heat levels. I’ll adjust up based on the temperature plot over the next few hours. I think I want low 80s.

Went to a restaurant supply place yesterday at lunch and picked up a bussing tray I’ll use to drain my reservoir. It’ll take 2 trips across the hallway to dump if the res is full. Also grabbed some buffet trays I’ll use to sit the MegaGarden up off the bottom of the tent 6" so it’ll drain easily into the bussing bin for res changes. You’ll soon see my hairbrained scheme to tilt the whole MegaGarden slightly forward to get the res closer to totally empty.

Acquired some nice graduated pitchers for mixing nutes as well.

Posts without pics are boring but me keeping track of what I’m doing.

[BigF]

Just found your indoor thread, looks good!
FWIW, all clones and seedlings here go in rockwool and get full strength nutes right out of the gate. Will avoid the deficiencies you see showing as pale leaves on the seedlings.
Caveat: I am running Athena which can run at 3.0 without burning the babies. I would never try that with something like GH.
Glad to see you went with rockwool for the babies. Love rockwool, fantastic clean and even drybacks.

[FieldEffect]

@BigF I’ll definitely be cranking them up. Bit pensive on first indoor and first hydro.

Loving the rockwool. I’m sold. I always thought from the pictures that it was more like pumice, hard like a rock with lots of pores. Didn’t realize it’s more like felt in consistency. Really cool.

Thanks for stopping in

[BigF]

I tried a rockwool hempy when we ran the Grape Cake Head pheno hunt. Results looked super promising. Took the smallest plant of about 15 that were in 4" cubes and put it in a hempy bucket. At harvest, she was the 3rd biggest plant and had the thickest stem.

[FieldEffect]

Looking good today. Got the new meters, and excitedly calibrated and checked my feed solution.

The PH60/EC60 are both really nice instruments. Love the cases with calibration vial spots and small bottles of cal solution. Nicely done

Runtz x Sour Bubble looking good this morning feed at about half dilution (0.4 EC):

The rest also looking good. Watered at 0.9EC Megacrop 2-part Veg

Photone on my phone (Google Pixel 7 Pro) is really close to the new PAR meter. About 300 PPFD depending on height of course for the bigger ones and 200 for the hatchlings. I’ll be renting an Apogee for comparison in the next few weeks. But my phone (photone tells me NOT to use a diffuser on mine) spits out a number about 3% low (ex: phone reports 290 new meter reports 300). It’s consistent too. Looking forward to doing some more thorough examinations and comparisons under different sources and different meters.

Here’s the veg side overall just so you can see where the lights are positioned. I’m going to put ruler graduations on the baffles to make height measurements easy in the future.

Need to rig up small wind fans in the veg side so I can stiffen 'em up a little I’ll be thinking about that

[JerBear]

Good morning! I’ve got a question, do those rootriots break down ok over the course of the plants growth? I ask because a couple weeks ago, I came across a video of someone using a newer similar product, basically saying that’s why he didn’t care for the rootriot product but it felt more like a plug for the product than truth.

[FieldEffect]

@JerBear

do those rootriots break down ok over the course of the plants growth?

Not sure what you mean by “break down ok” but I assume you are asking if they impede the roots at all?

They seem to be holding their shape well, so they aren’t decomposing in a literal sense. They don’t seem to present any impediment to the roots either, unlike the coco or peat “seedling pots” I’ve used in prior years - where you tear the pot off and find roots all bunched up. I’ve used both of those and it’s always a rootball inside so I always cut the bottoms off before I transplant.

I prefer these over the expanding pucks, coco or peat. I won’t ever be going back to those. I love these things, they’re worth the cost to me even if they were $0.50 each. The texture is amazing, the sponge-like consistency is really easy to work with, and the seeds/plants seem right at home. No mess either.

[JerBear]

I just assumed(I should know better at my age to assume) that the seedling in the rootriot plug is transplanted into whatever larger pot a person is growing in and the rootriot plug biodegrades.

[FieldEffect]

I expect eventually it would disintegrate but I don’t know yet. To me, I don’t mind if it stays around forever. The roots will eventually break it into pieces. Not sure why it would matter at this scale. Can you elaborate on your concern?

My frame of reference is outdoor plants with stalks bigger than the rooting plug. It would be torn to bits just as the plant grew. Or, this sort of thing indoors where I’m growing in a media that won’t hardly ever decompose, but I will probably rinse it all out, shred it and recycle it as a textural amendment for soil.

[JerBear]

It really wasn’t my concern so much as the guy that made the video, guess I was just looking for a short answer. I haven’t used any kind of rooting pod this early in my growing journey but I’ve wanted to try these rootriots since learning about them and probably will when I’m ready to tackle learning to clone. Thank you!

[FieldEffect]

Highly recommend them. That’s about the gist of it. They are sweet

[JoeCrowe]

I know the rockwool never breaks down, but no idea about the root riots.

[DirtySlowToes]

Yeah man…first one to come up with a way to recycle rockwool in an affordable way will be a rich man or woman.

@JerBear For rapid rooters and whatnot, they don’t really disappear, but they do become one with the soil. By the time of harvest, at least in my world, it’s near impossible to distinguish between the two. At least in my experience, plugs are plugs and there aren’t that many advantages over one or the other

[ReikoX]

I’ve had root riots remain intact through my worm bin after about six months. I usually just shred them up and add them back to the soil. Using the Floraflex ones lately. They are supposed to decompose completely, but they discontinued them.

[MissinBissin]

Foliar misting is another way to
Deliver nutes, without Burdoning the soil…

I saw a comment back a ways about “limited nutes in a stage” and just wanted to throw that out there as an option @FieldEffect

[noknees]

@FieldEffect

Runtz x Sour Bubble looking good this morning

babies look great dude!

your veg lights look so serious!

are you going to label/tag the plants?

[FieldEffect]

@DirtySlowToes I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be washed and reused, at least out in the garden. I’m going to try shredding it apart when I wash it. Maybe I can reform it after separating old roots. I dunno. It’s a new problem for me, seems like a good soil textural amendment though.

@MissinBissin sure thing I think we’re cruising for now. I’ve spoiled my outdoor ladies with kelp and aloe foliars for the last 2 years. I actually watched a Science in Hydroponics video about it a few days ago. Thanks for the reminder. And those surprises

@noknees Thanks! I’ve been getting good advice I need to pick up some small labels for the bricks, in the meantime they are all labeled with sharpie on the white plastic rockwool wrappers. Better believe they’re going to be tracked like hawks come clone and flower time.

And it’s certainly possible I went a little overboard with the veg lights

[FieldEffect]

Watered again with same solutions. Runtz x Sour Bubble seedlings still getting the 0.4EC, 907 Blue Genes x Shiskaberry 3 and 907 Blue Genes x NL #1 already in 3" cubes getting 0.9EC. pH 5.51 which I actually trust now and didn’t verify with dropper solution or ph paper.

I moved the weaker 907xShisk onto a small tray and placed it up on the ~200 PPFD shelf rather than the ~400 PPFD lower shelf. The lower seedlings for the most part are taking off now, but that one seemed stunted so trying to take it out of the fast lane for a while.

I’ve done some basic comparison of these 3 PAR measurement solutions:
Photobio Quantum PAR
PPFD Meter App + Uni-T UT383BT
Photone App + Google Pixel 7 Pro No Diffuser (the app requests diffuser paper be removed on this phone)

For the veg light, I just set them side by side to get an idea. How far off in the weeds are they? They are all close, astonishingly so. The most error I observed was about 30 at 650 ppfd (5%), with both the photone app and the PPFD Meter App reading slightly lower than the Photobio unit. I’ll be really curious how these compare under the flower light (XS1500 Pro) and relative to the Apogee 510. But all 3 agree, at least on the veg light, to within 5%. This is just a simple sanity check, when I compare closer I’ll ensure they are all in the same physical spot, same altitude, correct LED flavors selected in the apps.

I also did a teardown of the Photobio meter as well as the UT383BT. I’ll spend some time writing this all up to go in the thread I make. Here’s some teasers if there are technical folks eager to see.

Preliminarily, I’m suprised the Photobio is as sophisticated as it is. It’s pretty nicely executed. They have a color-channeled ambient light sensor (so they are doing spectral compensation) as well as a photodiode, all with bandpass filter. The primary microcontroller is the larger IC there, MSP430. Makes sense to integrate the measurement capture in the detector head. The battery/display box is essentially just a dumb display with LCD driver and buttons.

The UT383 ($30) is basically what I expected to find in both - a large-area photodiode with filter assembly. It has a surprisingly nice circuit design for the front end TIA with 4 gain ranges. I can’t believe anything like this can be sold for $30 retail price. This thing probably costs $5 to make. Just blows my mind sometimes.

Cheers guys, have a great weekend.

I’ll be moving the Runtz x SB up to cubes this afternoon or in the morning.