Things still going good. Had a little hiccup when I did the last res change, seems to be a thing lately. Makes me scared of doing full drain and refill lol. PPM’s are hovering around 700ish. Sometimes when I defoliate a little much the ppm’s will go up for a day but the rest of the time they’re straight tanking. She’s also drinking a quarter gallon in 12 hrs while the lights are on, maybe up to a half gallon a day. I’ve also been slowly raising the wattage(and height as needed) on my qb’s daily, up to 290 watts at the wall(374w is max on this driver) at the moment and lights are sitting around 21" from the canopy. Temps staying under 75, really right around 70 degrees F when the light is on, extraction fan is on almost constantly since i’m trying to keep RH below 70%. Temps don’t get lower than 63 with lights off. Gonna have to figure out how to get my dehumidifier in the room, it takes too many amps to run on my main circuit with the lights and stuff but yeah. Figure as long as I can get it in by the time flowers start forming I should be good.
Starting to get flower formation! Nothing fancy yet but can tell the whirl pattern is starting at the bud sites. She shot up 2.5 inches over night(well night for me, daytime for her). Drank almost a half gallon in ~12hours. PPM’s went from 765 to 710 in that same 12 hour span. Topped off the res again and added some more nutes to get me up to 820ppm just before lights off this morning. Getting a slight lemon and big hash smell from her. Stem rub is kinda lemony-piney still. So far so good.
Day 14 of flower, 74 days overall. Seems stuck around 21" now but flowers are definitely starting, she’s eating less now the last couple days or so and I’ve had to lower ppm’s a bit. Removed all but 3 branches on the 3rd node of every main as the rest weren’t even seeing the light, also took a few leaves that were pointing down and completely shaded at the bottom, and a few in the middle to open her up a bit and give that center growth some time to reach for the canopy. Hoping she’ll stretch at least a few more inches before full on flower mode starts… Now for the pics!
Bonus clone shots, she’s definitely growing now but its been a bit rough since moving into a pot. I only had some miracle grow potting mix and she’s in her own humidity tent thing so temps are staying around 64 and humidity is around 45. I’m lighting it with 2x HLG qb288 v2’s @ 4k in parallel on an HLG-120H-54A turned all the way down. Lights are like 36" from the plant. I had to add a clear plastic cup inverted on top of the pot with just a couple spots for air exchange. Once I did that she stopped dying and started growing.
So looks like I’ll have a mom for clones after all, just gotta keep her going and I’m hoping she’ll be worth the effort. Should find out here in like two months ^^
I think 64°F is way too low a temperature for a clone. 45% RH is pretty low too. I prefer to run about 77°F (25°C) and 60% RH for all veging plants. If you have a seed starter mat, it may help keep the soil warm.
@ReikoX
yeah definitely too low, growth on her is SUPER slow because of it but I don’t have a mat currently. I do have a whole seed starter tray with heater built-in tho, maybe i could re-appropriate that? Its what I started her in… I may just need to go buy a separate mat then. The inverted cup is definitely bringing up the RH and its helping but idk what it is exactly as I can’t fit the meter in there.
edit: This is basically what she’s growing in. Planning on picking up a 2x2x4 or something tent to veg in soon.
Been a fun time the last couple days. before I defoliated a bit like 4 days ago she was eating 800ppm’s steady, after that and now that it looks like flowers are starting the ppm’s have been climbing fast. I set it to 790 and 5.8 ph, 12 hours later it was 830 and 5.7. I topped off with plain ph’d water to 760 and 5.86. 12 hours later it was 790 and 5.6. I topped off with plain water and set to 680 and 5.75, 12 hours later(this morning) its 750 and 5.1. I had to top off and reset to 680 and 5.9. All but the day I defoliated she’s been drinking anywhere between 1/4-1/2 gallon every 12 hours. That one day she drank maybe a half gallon in 24hrs.
It’s been a long time since last time I flowered a plant but I had the understanding the nutrient requirement would steadily increase from the start of germ until like week 5 of flower or so, and I can understand defoliating will lower the nutrient requirements, but its not like I took off that much. Roots are sparkly white. Just a bit of weirdness this week.
Still having fun times with PH and ppm’s this last week or so. Ever since the buds started forming it seems like the nutrient requirement tanked. She’s down around 400-450PPM’s now and seeming to hold steady there at the moment, but higher than that and the ppms increase drastically and ph tanks. Biggest swing I’ve seen so far was something like from ph 5.8 to 4.2 and ppms going from 500 to 650 all inside of 12 hours. Craziness. She’s still looking good(Although I just started seeing purple leaf stems yesterday) and drinking plenty(1 gal a day) but its just been a hassle. Anyways, on to the pics! Believe this is day 20 of flower.
And finally, a couple pics of the clone/soon-to-be-mom, she’s finally big enough to able to take the cup off the top of her pot. She’s just about an inch tall now and growing daily. Quicker than I thought really.
Alright I think I figured out my ph swing issue. Turns out the root mat is about 3 inches thick and completely filling the entire bottom of my 10gal res. So I think instead of 4 gallons of water i’m actually only able to put in around 2 or so, there’s not enough water to maintain the ph at all so hence the swings. Gonna try and setup my bigger tote tonight and get her moved over. Really hope that fixes it.
ugh… so she was DEFINITELY root bound in my 10gal tote. I wanted to take some pics so bad but I would’ve needed someone else helping me so I couldn’t. Safe to say the root mass was taking up the entire bottom half of my 10gal tote, would estimate something like 5" thick, 10" wide, and like 20" long root mat. I couldn’t take out the airstones or even see them for that matter. Got her all moved over into a 17gal rubbermaid now with around 9 gallons of water and ph/ppm’s are holding stable now 12 hours later.
I definitely got some low ph burn tho while she was rootbound at 4.2 PH
Aaaaaand back in business! She ate over 100ppm of nutes in the last 24 hours and PH has been staying pretty stable, back to only rising instead of straight tanking. Seems the stretch has mostly stopped now and she’s starting to fatten up those buds! I had started this tote(lil over 8 gallons of water) at 500ppm with 3ml/gal of aqua flakes a+b, 1.5 tsp epsom salt, and 2ml/gal of DiamondNectar, after 12 hours she ate 50ppm. Then I noticed some slight mag deficiency and realized it was week 4 so I added another 1/.2 tsp epsom salt, 2ml/gal of Bud XL, and 1ml/gal of canna’s PK 13/14 to bring me up to 550PPM. She was at 500PPM this morning, 10ish hours later. Think I’m gonna need to raise it up to around 600ppm when I do the tote change.
My two R-Spec boards are pushing 330w from the wall about 16-18" above the canopy. I can’t really raise them any higher than this but she’s not getting light stressed yet that I can tell. Should be right around 34-35w/sqft after accounting for efficiency from the driver. I can technically push this driver up to 374watts at the wall but pretty sure that’s gonna be straight overkill without additional co2. So I’m planning on just staying where I’m at for now as if HLG’s charts are accurate I should be easily pushing over 1000 par at the canopy.
I had to cut up my net I wasn’t using properly anyways just to do the tote switch, this new tote has a leak though so I’m gonna have to do it again this weekend with a new tote. I did manage to hang what was left of the net, basically the outermost squares is all I have left of it. Used a couple squares to pull the tallest branches out and away from the center so she can breathe a bit easier and get more light down in there. Also trimmed off a bunch of leaves in the center and some small branches that weren’t doing anything underneath. Also moved the 6" fan i have under the plant so its now blowing up from the top of the tote directly into the center of the plant. Temps are staying around 80 with lights on, RH is ~50%-60%, temp with lights off is 64. Now for some pics!
Alright, growth is still going good here. Got final big defoliation done now that we have tops everywhere and lowered nutes a bit to around 550 PPM/1.1 EC. PH holding steady around 5.8-6. The hashy smell she’s had for a couple weeks now is finally giving way to a strong lemon scent up front and, as of yesterday, a sweet berry smell on the back end. Smells absolutely tasty and fantastic. Hoping that really shines through here by harvest.
Lowered the net a bit so I could spread her out some more. Haven’t really defoliated this much before so I left a decent amount of fan leaves on the outside of her and anywhere that wasn’t covering a budsite. Really opened her up in the middle and now I can see light getting through to all the bud sites. Also can tell the airflow is getting around to the whole plant and keeping RH in check. Fan is on low so no issues with wind burn that I can see. The base of the fan is too big to fit in the tent to have it stand and oscillate so I had to make do with what I could. Hopefully another month and it’ll be about harvest season but we’ll see. Kinda doubting that 55 day flowering time from FoS but who knows.
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In other news, got the 2x2x4 veg tent for the mom and whatever else. Its an ‘Opulent Systems’ tent and its actually pretty damn good quality, I was impressed for how cheap it was.
Need to buy a Slate 2 I think or really hunt around work for some more aluminum or something as the lights are just kinda dangling off eye hooks on this board with some twisty ties but it works for the moment.
I picked up like a 2 or 3 gallon air pot and some happy frog over the weekend so will get around to transplanting her once she’s a little bigger, but doing good so far. Just need to get the RH and temps up a bit as they’re like 65F/50RH currently.
So apparently it helps if I actually do the res change every week instead of forgetting and then wondering why she’s not eating Lost another day of growth for sure, maybe two, but she’s back to eating again now. In good news I guess I’ll know exactly what to do for the next run of her if she turns out nice. Anyways, on to the pics!
And then clone is still going, this miracle grow soil isnt doing too good for her tho. The plan is to wait until she fills out this pot and then transplant her into the airpot with happy frog but I’m thinking I may need to just shake her lose and transplant her now. Thoughts?
So it turns out it helps to double check the PH of the water for the clone/mom, was 7.7 and I could’ve swore it was 6.5 this whole time. So I fixed that and kinda flushed her out a bit with the (new water+root excelurator+tribus original) since it’s been 4 days or so since last water and she finally dried out a bit… The brand new growth looks good its just been the older leaves going yellow and such. Hoping she’ll bounce back fast and really get to growing here soon now that the water is fixed. Itching to get her in the air pot with the Happy Frog and have a real mom to take clones from.
The main girl is still doing mostly good. Still bouncing off the PPM wall a lil bit though. Been fun times there. For instance I reset the res to 600ppm and 5.84ph on the 16th. 12 hours later it was 638 and ph 6.01, topped off and set to 577 and 5.88. 12 hours later it was 583 and 5.93ph, I did nothing, 12 hrs later it was 581 and ph dropped to 5.3, had to add 2ml of ph up to get it to 5.75 and 585 ppms. 12 hrs later she’s at 573 and 5.66ph, I added 1ml of ph up to get her to 5.9ph. 12 hrs later/this morning she was at 578 and 5.77ph, I topped her off to get her down to 535 ppms and get the ph back up to 5.9. She’s drinking a bunch like normal through all this but it’s been like two weeks of this. All my roots are white and clean, res smells right and not cloudy or anything… I’m about at the point where I think I need to just run plain ph’d water and maybe some florakleen for 12 hours or so and then set the res back to like 500ppms or so. That sound like a good idea? Or any guess on a target ppm/ec maybe? She’s not even 3ft tall.
FINALLY fixed the ppm issues, I ended up dosing .5ml/gal of Clorox(sodium hypochlorite) last night and as of this morning she was reeking again, praying to the light, ph is slowly climbing, and ppm’s are going down. Didn’t do any damage over this last week but think I definitely lost some days of growth on her. She’s starting to fatten up more but not much has changed visually since she hasn’t really been growing for a few days.
In other news, I’ll be picking up some HTH Pool Shock(Calcium Hypochlorite) to use instead of the Clorox, and just gonna run a sterile res from here on out. Pool Shock at.1grams/10gal = 1PPM free chlorine, and you need somewhere between 3 and 5.5ppm to keep it sterile. The Clorox dose of .5ml/gal = roughly 5ppm of free chlorine. No harm to the plant at all and yeah, keeps the res sterile. Just gotta dose it every week or water change.
I was planning on running two new strains for next grow but with the amount of weeks I’ve lost on this girl it’s really making me wanna run her again instead to see what she does without any issues. Hoping she turns out good anyways.
I’ve topped the clone/mom of her, It’s finally looking like its strong enough for the crap miracle grow i’m using until she’s big enough to transplant into the happy frog. Thinking I may get a smaller air pot than 3 gallons tho, I don’t need a huge mom or anything. Any thoughts on that?
but it works for the moment.
Lost another day of growth for sure, maybe two, but she’s back to eating again now. In good news I guess I’ll know exactly what to do for the next run of her if she turns out nice. Anyways, on to the pics!
