That’s ‘fuzzy territory’ for me too. I didn’t know about the bacteria part of this @Foreigner , I assumed the calcium carbonate was going into solution.
I’ve known that crushed eggshells would last a couple years in compost and assumed that the slow breakdown was due to the size of the chunks. Now that I have a good surplus now of eggshell powder I can test that hypothesis.
Thank-you guys! New side project to investigate. 
Cheers
G
Are you working with sativa dominate autos?
Like @7lpdwcaw, I was warned off manipulation of Autos. What I have grown out were Indica dominate and well behaved height wise so I didn’t ‘have an urge’ to mess with them.
Cheers
G
Im not sure about sativa/indica ratios in the ones Ive grown. I suspect some of both? None of them have been the super fast autos. All have stayed fairly short though.
The Dragon Tongue CBD I got from @Sebring, and the Ghost Toof x SBR from @ReikoX are the only autos Ive grown to harvest so far. Both seemed to respond just fine to the training I did - FIMing/topping early, followed by LST under a scrog screen - which continued well into flowering. I averaged well over 1 kg per plant (trimmed wet weight) - which is well above average for autos.
It seems to me that the FIMing/topping does slow them down a little maybe - all have taken longer than the average of other growers with the same strains to reach harvest. It certainly didnt hurt yields. I dont think doing a simple LST would even delay them. I also managed to add some serious drought stress on each grow. I know that was a factor for sure as far as delaying harvest.
I do think you need to start training earlier than with photos or you will run out of time and wont see the full results.
There was someone else having good results training autos, but I forget who it was - @Mr.Sparkle maybe?
You sure can’t argue those results!
LST slows done photo period a little as well so no difference there.
Huh, that is an interesting data point, thanx!
So, the implication is you can do more training with the slower autos and less with the fast ones?
Cheers
G
@DiggySoze and @Foreigner,
Thanks guys, that was a nice distraction today! Yeah, I was bored…
Lets see if I can splice in the block of text…
Calcium Carbonate & uptake research
Well, that was an interesting research project.
I have learned I’ve been misapplying my CC in flower top dressing… Calcium will bind up potassium – that explains why my use of Gaia Green Bloom top dressing in flower didn’t do as much as I expected.
Also according to the Promix folks,
If your calcium level in your water has 40 – 60 PPM – no worries (I’m paraphrasing but for some reason I cannot cut ‘n paste)
According to Peel Region (local) water report (2018), I’ve got 120 – 130 mg/L. (For a first order approximation - I’ll go with that…)
From Wiki re quality of agricultural lime.
Because the acids in soil are relatively weak, agricultural limestones must be ground to a small particle size to be effective. The extension service of different states rate the effectiveness of stone size particles slightly differently.[12] They all agree, however, that the smaller the particle size the more effective the stone is at reacting in the soil.[13] Measuring the size of particles is based on the size of a mesh that the limestone would pass through. The mesh size is the number of wires per inch.[14] Stone retained on an 8 mesh will be about the size of BB pellets. Material passing a 60 mesh screen will have the appearance of face powder. Particles larger than 8 mesh are of little or no value, particles between 8 mesh and 60 mesh are somewhat effective and particles smaller than 60 mesh are 100 percent effective.
For reference: 60 mesh equals 250 micron particle size or 0.001”
TL:DR
Blend it to a fine powder
So, now the ‘hands on part’
For S&G (shits and giggles)
I took 1 cup of pH’d & bleached (50PPM) water. (+48Hrs. old)
pH = 6.2(ish)
and added 1.25mL (1.58g )of powdered eggshell, gave it a good stir and let it settle.
Observations
water still has some ‘cloud’ to it and there is lots of sediment. I will try to measure the amount left out of solution but this will take a while.
1Hr, 15m later, pH = 7 (ish) So some went into solution.
A day later I canted off the water and dried out the residual powder. 1.14 g remaining and that being med/course ground material. So about 28% into solution… that sounds like a lot of calcium…
I’m removing my powdered eggshell from my top dressing recipes.
Use will be for base soil preparations.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01904168009362774
Thanks and Cheers
G
Now you tell me! 
I am the king of stressing. Thanks to a combination of shear stupidity, and a bad case of GWS (Growing While Stoned), I have managed to severely dry out my roots several times on each grow. For soil, the drought stressing I have done would be equivalent to at least a week without watering. Im talking major root die back each time. Makes me wonder what might happen if I didnt stress my babies as much? 
On the other hand, maybe the stress is contributing to the yields. @Northern_Loki posted a research paper a while back claiming the drought stress increased yields. Maybe I was doing the right thing all along!
EDIT: @Mr.Sparkle comment about training and pruning tending to stunt the plants makes sense. All the different training techniques stimulate new growth stems and stops the apical growth. Where the plant had one stem to grow initially, after training it will have several to grow at the same time. Vertical growth would have to slow down while all that new side growth takes over. Im not sure thats a bad thing at all though. Your trained plant may be shorter, but you will have many extra colas budding up to replace the few you had before. Extra colas extra yield - I think.
Well if the plant is rocking, even harsh training they respond quick, it just if they aren’t or have some issues then doing any training doesn’t help.
But yeah longer autos are more apt to training techniques just cause they have more time to respond, but topping/fim-ing if done early enough doesn’t even slow them down, sure splits that energy but you use that to suit your needs.
Also why flopping is my preferred training technique, keeps the apex shoot intact, but causes the side shoots to take over for awhile allowing the plant to level out persay.
Really so long as the plants are healthy most training techniques won’t affect them, apart from harsh defoliation just cause they only have so much time to regrow some leaves.
My personal mind model of this is basically our LST/HST are taking advantage of several ‘disaster response’ sub-routines embedded in the plant. These are embedded at a really low level, everybody gets ‘a copy’ (not all copies are equal).
The photo period has an adjustable veg cycle. The autos are on a ‘wind-up timer’.
Anyway, a work in progress…
Cheers
G
Good analogy G.
Lets see if I can rebuild this shit!! 
Damn! - that was a funny cross post Fk up!
and a 1 and a 2… (a F.I. I’m going for a bowl 1st)
REBOOT
May 10 ‘macros’
Day 57
observed thru 20x
50% + cloud
“Scope analysis”
70 - 90% cloudy
25 - 5 % clear
0 to 5% Amber
Yeah, it doesn’t add up quite… I’m stoned 
Cheers
G
I did wonder when I saw it in the covid thread late last night lol.
Yup! Dropped a steaming pile that time!!
Trying to get something done while tired, 'cause I’d forget about it by morning…
Cheers
G
There be 20 characters etc.
Fantastic thread. Great pics, info and your work area is super clean. Like mr sparkle clean. Love it! 
Well thanks for the kind words @Mongobongo! How’s things going at ‘The Hub of the Kawarthas’?
@Mr.Sparkle sets a rather ‘high bar’ for workmanship standards (checkout the alignment of his seedlings…)
My tent is reasonably shipshape but the rest of my work area would be kindly described as ‘functionally cluttered’.
Cheers
G
Thought of the Day
OK, I spent some time reading up on Tissue Cultures today & after processing that info (and smoking a bowl & a magic chocolate)…
I can see a time where you place an order for literally whatever you can imagine and have the viable plant in your hand a month later. Oh Yeah, all robotic processing (mostly)
Damn! What’s in this shit?
Cheers
G
Now read up on artificial seeds. 
Wait … Wut??
Damn, what am I smoking?
Cheers
G
You guys are behind the times. We are going to have organic printers one of these days. All you need is the data file for what ever it is and a few basic ingredients, and then you just print it out - our seeds, whole plants, or a cheese burger, with or without fries, plus the milkshake, and it will even print the napkins for you.
