king tut has been strutting it’s stuff!
oh, forgot to mention I have a new DWC cloning protocol! I used to just use water to make the clones, but now I put some 1/2 strength nutrients in there for stronger roots. The secret is: never allow the nutrient solution and light come into contact, or your clones will die. That means no contacting the surface of the water for those neoprene disks. I’ll post a photo later, it’s just a rubbermaid with holes in the lid. I constructed all this crap myself.
conductivity on the massive king tut is 3.2, it’s a hungry hippo! I’ll post some cloning photos today.
clones are cloning! Underneath there are no roots yet, it’s only been 2 days. The clones are growing though, which is a Good Thing™ Keep them suckers growing as they’re cloning. That was the other downside to using just water… they didn’t grow as they cloned. Extra light would shit on them because the conditions weren’t right for the clone, it needed more cardinal inputs…I mean…well just go and see what the plant needs, it was missing the nutrients 
I got my meter squared plots right here. I just need to get some more infrared radiation in there to get my plants growth rates back up. If you can believe this shit. I experimented with the LED light and the growth rate of the plant. Seemed great! Little did I know I was getting infrared radiation from the HPS which I didn’t realize way to blow the experiment dumbass. I learned a huge lesson though, infrared light is definitely needed for the plant to really bulk up. I wonder how much I need? Anyways excessive blue light is stopping plant cell elongation, which seems to be holding things back. The bottom line is, once I took the hps light out of the veg room, growth rates really slowed down.
had to take apart and re-oil/de-grease the ol computer fan there. Howling like a banshee, it was. I’ve got some more photos of how my hydro system is constructed. It’s a basic medium-less deep water culture. I grew all sorts of things in there. Hot peppers, tomatoes, cantalope…so on. Growing crap is a pretty basic hobby no magic involved. Grow a habanero or grow some cannabis, it uses the same principals. Phew ever used pk boost on a pepper plant? lol! But anyways, these are all pictures of the meat breath plants, they are bulking up. The air injection is just a stainless steel nut with a T on the end of the silicone hose. pumped with some fancy multiple outlet pumps. I avoid reverse siphon, by putting the hose hole in the top of the lid. If you say it could reverse on me, I would say there is no evidence of that. I could only engage reverse if I turned off the pumps and sucked on the hose. like I was stealing gas from an oldschool car. Make sure your stainless is non-magnetic, don’t want cheap crap, it rusts.
now you’ve seen it all. I just keep adding nutrients when the conductivity drops to 1 in bloom and .5 in veg. Rinse and repeat. Harvest, bag and process, repeat. lol! Oh the level I bump it up to depends on the size of the plant. I get a “feel” for the plant by monitoring it’s growth rate after each fertilizer dose. If it slows the plants growth rate, it wasn’t good. Dial that back. They usually like a little less than more.
I call it nutrient bisection. A concept I got from computer programming where to find the problem it would halve the version number, then check and see if the problem existed or not then repeat that process. Eventually you find the problem. That’s the strange process I use to figure out the optimal fertilizer dose to get a good growth rate. Lol honorary degree in computer science if you understood that shit.
hah hah ok I’ll explain the nutrient measurement right. So I start in bloom when the plant is big say and give it 90ml ferts if that seems to slow it’s growth I cut it back to 60, by replacing 1/3 of the solution with water. If it’s growing good then, I see how long it takes to go back down to EC 1 based on that I either go with it, or bump it up to 70 if the plant consumes that dose too fast. The more EC consumed directly relates to plant growth produced. When the EC drop is really slow, the plant is probably struggling for life. To entertain myself I will time the EC drop on the large plant. could learn something eh?
Got it down to a science there, nice. The King Tut looks really good, it’s a strain I’ve read tons of good things about but have never seen or tried…
What conditions did powdery mildew seem to grow best under?
And one more since you seem to know about microscopes haha, is there a decent relatively cheap on you’d recommend that can see things like pm or lactobacillus?
powdery mildew likes to grow on your plant. Even harboring spores will stay on discarded plant material of the same variety, so if you are trying to wipe it out, make sure you clean up all leaves or whatever. You need magnification 400x for a good view of fungus. I can’t really recommend one, but you need brightfield illumination, and I use a type called darkfield where only a sliver of light comes from the side. My friend got one from the biology class at high school when they gave them away. For spores you need a good oil immersion 1600x.
Cool thanks. I don’t know squat about any of that, but will start looking for a cool scope to try and learn more.
And yes, powdery mildew sure does love to grow on my plants lol 
lol when I had powdery mildew and it lasted forever I swear… I cleaned up the whole place swept the floor, washed it and crap. My whole lab is a containment zone, so nothing enters or escapes. Then I soaked the plants down in veg, they were really big already. 2 weeks later soaked em in sulfur again, then put them into bloom. Never saw that parasite again. Important part is clean up all plant material then soak all remaining plant material in sulfur. Containment zone only, pretty sure you can’t decontaminate the outside world. When I say I soaked the plant, I did. Overspray on the floor…mmmm nice stink. Milk and garlic juice will kill a bit of the mildew because of the sulfur it contains. I would rate powdery mildew as pretty weak on the list of parasites. Ranging from spider mites, which are the strongest to inchworms as the weakest. I think at this point there isn’t a parasite I haven’t figured out how to kill or prevent.
You know something I’ve noticed? The plant can like…speak to you in subtle ways. My example is this: A really healthy and growing plant has shiny leaves. When you admire the leaves they kind of shine like a shiny plastic pop bottle or something. I can’t be the only one who has noticed that when the leaves get dull it’s signalling growth has pretty much halted. Next stage is self-scavenging
clones have been rooted for a while now. I will plant them…uhh soon? Harvest is probably 4 weeks out…so the smells are starting!
Things are growing nicely! Those clones with roots will be all paired up into the “first run” as the large plants. The next 4 will be planted as they root… I hope but realistically I will run out of buckets and toss the remainder of the batch and start a new one with big buds. The most important part is making sure the clones root at the same time, otherwise you get a situation where one is way smaller than the rest, but one is really huge! I want all huge ones, of course. heh heh if you want to zero in on the conditions I use to grow, get ready for cognitive dissonance.
I got a new photo to share! Things are moving along nicely… probably got a couple of weeks left here. Then I can do the RED batch of hash. I am looking forward to it’s lilac taste!
Look at those sagging spears!
DWC sure does deliver the goods, wish I could come close to those yields in passive hydro.
yah, the secret is the large plants produce lots of buds… hah hah just kidding it’s not a secret. Unfortunately the mega producers are gone, but I’m in a search right now for that special plant that has it all. I’m merely asking for 1 kilo per light… is that too much? 
here’s the meat plants.
here’s a couple of budshots! The king tut has some kind of internal engineering, the branches are thick and come from an angular spot. This gives the plants branches incredible strength, so they don’t need support for the bud load. Sugar black rose needs plenty of support, it’s got spindly branches.
king tutIn case nobody has noticed, I don’t fuck with the plants. I mean, sure I will trim away the nothing growth near the base and toss the dead leaves…etc, but I’m not lording over their growth habit with any kind of serious defoliation or bending them or whatever. I DO come in there and start some heavy breathing…for carbon purposes lol and the lights are on a pulley for raising and lowering. The plants are growing up in the next room ready for the bloom phase and cloning as well. This keeps productivity moving along, so I can be harvesting every 2 months…ish…orso. Depending on human laziness. The footsteps of the gardener, makes the best fertilizer.
