Micro Octopot Grow

Nice to hear from you Paps!

Puttin one foot in front of the other here, most of the hard stuff is behind me on the Fem Frankie grow. Buds and seeds are both fattening up. Not my biggest harvest, but prolly my most interesting.

I had an interesting octo problem, perhaps I’ll post it here and let you experts have a wack at it…

Cheers,
-Grouchy :v: :green_heart:

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Not an expert just a hack myself

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I would increase the feed to 800ppm/ec1.2. ph is ok at 6.3.

@firehead consider gypsum or wollenstonite. a little extra calcium never hurts.

@Papalag @GrouchyOldMan : how do you do this fine tuesday gentlemen? tell me about the problem, I’m definitively not trying to avoid work…

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@SaintAliasKnife hi there all good here

Hopefully your having a great day

Oh by the way your garden is spot on

:+1::+1::+1:

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Thanks everyone for the advice. I will lower pH and raise ppm slightly the next time I water. It’s odd to me that one plant is drooping and the other isn’t. The one that is drooping has quite a few roots in the res while the one that isn’t drooping just has one root coming out of the net cup. Not quite touching the water as of last night. I hope that the other plant doesnt start showing the same symptoms once it’s roots reach the res

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Greetings All,
I’m reluctant to post this because I’ve just been using it to take notes as I worked through a recent problem. I think I’ve resolved the issue, but in the hope that the process might be useful to others growing in octopots, and at the request of my pal @SaintAliasKnife, I present “The Troubling Event!” Apologies in advance for self-indulgent rambling… I was talkin to myself mostly.

For the background to make sense of this refer here:

Frankie’s Daughters: Unpacking a Frozen Genome - #71 by GrouchyOldMan

I had been spending so much time on a sequential series of selective pollinations that I neglected my patient’s daily health checks in their hour of need!

I had a Hilda meltdown on my hands this week. Mature leaves yellowing and dying. Dozens. Both Hilda plants. Something has gone badly wrong here.

[There are a bunch of pics below]

Gads! What if I have kooked entirely and murdered the entire batch of Frankie’s Daughters; seed moms, F1 crosses, back crosses? I’ve got almost a year into this project already. WTFH went WRONG???

Unthinkable. That was my mindset until I observed the progressive rapid onset of a serious looking leaf problem that was common to both of my Hilda pheno plants. Yellowing, followed by brown spots, gray patches and finally death as the leaf tip dries and curls.

Those signs had developed over the course of a few days and I first considered the possibility that this was just the natural leaf fade and dieback as the plant nears harvest.

But at week 5, day 6 of flowering, Hilda didn’t look near ready, although the first red pistils have appeared and they are both bulking up sugary colas. The leaf damage appeared to progress upwards on the plant, with the oldest leaves having the most damage.

That progression suggested that this wasn’t a pest. I also ruled out mildew and fungus after a detailed inspection of the leaves top and bottom. Nuttin.

I considered a deficiency or excess in the nutes I was using, but it was a tried & true Jack’s early flower mix that I had used many times earlier as well as the other plants in the room. I pH each batch gallon by gallon and shoot for 6.0 until I hit it.

Yellow leaves also hint of a plant that is starving for more nutes. That leads to yellowing and death of the leaves from the bottom up. Right?

The problem is that the measured EC hit 2.1 on the most recent batch as I pushed these Frankenstein Daughters expecting them to be heavy eaters reflecting their clone-only parent. If anything, I might of been pushing their growth stage, but I’m pretty sure they were getting enough CannaCalories in their diet.

They were also getting their photons raining down from above. Each plant has its own 250watt ViparSpectra XS 2000 LED dimmed down to a solid 950 PPFD, on the top buds, the lowers were still getting a respectable 500. These lights can crank up to 1300+ I think, so dimmers and an 18" minimum distance were both in force.

The other environmentals were all in bounds, daily averages: Temp 68F, RH 46%, VPD 1.3. Right where I wanted them.

Oh yeah, runty little Olive, our other dominant phenotype plant, is completely unaffected. Both Olive plants are happily filling in small but very healthy looking buds. They haven’t missed a beat.

The first time I put all that together I came up with nothing. Because nothing explains all of those symptoms completely. On the other hand, there are half a dozen things that could be causing it.

To Be Continued…
I now know what happened but I welcome your analysis and the specifics of how you, my elite OG growers, would approach this problem?

I’ll follow up with my outcome in a few days. Maybe we’ll make a game of it… nail the problem win a pack of seeds?

-Grouchy

The very first stage

Top Down View, Yellowing and deficiencies, oldest leaves, all the way up

Second stage, pH and or Ca / Mg? Or just necrosis as the leaf gives it up?

Any attempt at diagnosis should explain why neither of the Olive phenotypes show any sign whatsoever that they even notice what’s going on. They are a week or two younger from seed, so I only recently upgraded them to early flower Jacks, otherwise everything is the same.

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Sorry, my :crystal_ball: is in the shop. Only thing that stood out to me was

That sounds a little cold to me, especially under LEDs. What’s the min/max value?

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Hmmm @ReikoX,
That’s one I hadn’t considered as a possible cause. Room temp range was 68-72F.

It’s been damned cold here in New England and my electric oil-filled radiator has a lag time once inkbird kicks it into gear. My focus was on VPD which was 1.2 - 1.4 night & day. RH average 50%

Those parameters are still in place and the plants have recovered.

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FWIW, I run my air temps at 81-84°F under LED. This usually gets my leaf surface temperatures to 75°F. VPD shpuld be calculated off leaf surface temps, not air temps.

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agreeing with Reiko. I’ve had those rust spots on my plants when my temps were under 70F. I believe the low temp messed calcium uptake. I’d up the temp …and gypsum fixes everything.

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Learn sumthin ever day round here…

I have commanded Captn InkBird to notch the temp set point up a couple degrees.

Gracias, (but no prize!),
-Grouchy :rofl:

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Yeah. I struggle with those spots every winter too. Winter growing is tough in the north

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I agree with all about temps too low

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Lights are currently 28 inches away and at 240 watts total. They are two HLG qb96’s in my slightly smaller than 2x4 closet. This is one thing that I have not been confident about. Ive been messing around with some of the lux apps. I’m pretty sure I should be somewhat in the right ballpark in terms of light but I could be way off depending on the accuracy of those readings

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Maybe this picture is more telling. I’ve been noticing the texture of the leaves also seems off. And they are somewhat wrinkly

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yellowing on the edges of the lead in the cage, heat stress, and I would increase circulation a fan would help them

A bit
MHO
Paps

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Ya you know from the research I’ve done I was thinking it looked like heat stress too… but my temps have not ever gone above 80, and I even just bought an IR gun to measure leaf temps. Leaf temps were lower like 73 if I remember correctly. In fact I actually had to put in a small space heater on a thermostat to get my temps where I wanted them. Without the heater my temps were low like 68-70 with my four inch exhaust fan set to 2! Unfortunately I live above my landlord and have no control over the thermostat. So ya air circulation has been lower than I’d like in order to keep my temp around 77

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Or just add a small oscillating fan aimed directly at the plant

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While doing so, you also teach lot of poor souls who learns passively here , like me brother… :wink: :green_heart::green_heart::green_heart:

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Here are my two sour stompers at day 25 from sprout. Curious what ppm you all would be feeding your plants at this stage?

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