Oni's 2nd grow. Lessons learned

[anon86068642]

Humidity is at 40% still.
Growth seems to be better than when the soil was measuring 7 at the runoff before. Odd. The newest sprouted cilantro is a darker green too.

Some burnt tips or purple tips. Too small to tell.
I’m letting the soil continue to dry more as growth has resumed at a steady rate as of yesterday.

IDK if it had to do with the 4 hours of sleep a day they get now or the lowered lights until I read 15,000 lux at 24" and not 6,000 at the 32" I had the lights at before. When the auto starts to show sex I’ll fit my hps back in. It should help once it starts to snow out again and the house Temperature drops 10°f on average with that room getting a 20-30° drop.

At 12" I see 25,000-30,000 lux and 6" I see 50,000 lux. If I go 3-4" almost touching my lights I measured 150,000 lux.

I’m aware that lux is only for how bright it is to the human eye, but I’m using it more as a intensity measurement to see where light intensity drops off.

[anon86068642]

Well now I’m confused. If I look up autoflower ideal pH every source so far is saying 6.2-6.5 pH for soil and 5.5-6.1 pH for hydroponics.

Can someone help me grasping this?
I had the thought to look it up after thinking about global pH differences and that just the light wasn’t only what made rudy very hearty. It made me ask the question: if it adapted to harsh conditions what could they be? Then I realized it was many things, but what came to mind is the difference in soil quality, light, temperature, and wind made it most likely have more adaptable roots I’d think to combat those conditions mainly letting it root enough to survive. Losing my train of thought now, but after a few hours of research I saw that Rudy came from a region with more acidic soil.

Another part of this thought was when I looked up the ideal pH of my cilantro, garlic, oregano, and finally the thought about Russian soil pH came about and then it was all downhill from there.

@ReikoX do you have any notes about autos and have you ever tested those pH ranges before? I would think the ruderalis genetics would have some effect on what conditions it would prefer, but maybe I’m just seeing a hearty plant show me how hard it is to kill😅

[ReikoX]

@OniTenshu

Well now I’m confused. If I look up autoflower ideal pH every source so far is saying 6.2-6.5 pH for soil and 5.5-6.1 pH for hydroponics.

Those are the correct pH parameters for Cannabis, photoperiod or otherwise. I’ve run these soil pH 6.1, hydro pH 5.7 without issues.

On a side note, with my living soil mix, I never mess with pH, but that soil has a lot of liming agents and minerals.

@OniTenshu

I would think the ruderalis genetics would have some effect on what conditions it would prefer, but maybe I’m just seeing a hearty plant show me how hard it is to kill​:sweat_smile:

Dont get too hung up on Rudy, these are multi-polyhybrids that happen to posses the recessive autoflowering trait. They are no more a landrace than any other modern multi-polyhybrid out there.

These little guys shouldn’t need anything but light and water until they get their first few leaves. They are moderate feeders. The only thing to be careful not to stress autos, they are very unforgiving of mistakes.

[anon86068642]

Thanks for the tips😊
I wasn’t planning on topping this girl. LST and a trellis netting at most, but I currently plan on letting the soil continue drying after finally understanding what you’ve been trying to tell me all this time about the roots reaching for the water. As it dries from top to bottom the roots will chase the water down to the bottom. Did I understand that correctly?

Also on a side note I have noticed that the auto is growing one side with longer leaves than the other. From the moment it popped out of the soil I noticed it had one Longer leaf. Not as present in the first serrated leaves that came out, but the ones that are forming now in the same direction as the starter leaves are following the same growth pattern and one is about 1.5-2x longer than the other. Not symmetrical at all. I’ll have to teach my OCD not to freak out about it. Apparently symmetry is something calming for me and when it’s not it tends to cause anxiety. I’m hoping weed may help me get over that even a little.

[anon86068642]

Oh yeah it’s been awhile since I posted any pics. The tip burn stopped in it’s tracks after flushing the soil awhile back.

And a closup with 3000k color correction

I’ve been practicing LITFA I’m just waiting on the soil to dry more. So far none of the plants are unhappy with the soil. The last cilantro seedling to pop up has a darker green as well.

I did some research and found out that cilantro wants a ideal pH of 6.5-7.5 and likes 6.1-7.8. The garlic wants 6.0-7.5 pH ideally. The oregano has a very large window of 6.0-9.0 pH. If the garlic chives ever pop up then they like a 6.0-7.0 pH ideally.

One common thread I see is they all like the same soil types and with a very compatible pH to what I would want in my soil if I can maintain it at a 6.1-6.8 window they’ll all do fine apparently and once the root system starts to develop it should help when it comes to drying later.
I did notice that my taproots in my last grow never went farther than halfway down. They were 8" long at Max. The side roots were insane though. I couldn’t even try to work the soil without tearing roots last grow.

[anon86068642]

Well it looks like my suspicion that they liked the change after the flush is Definitely more obvious now. The oregano just started to green up again and the 1st set of true leaves are growing now out of the cotyledon a nice dark green.
The cilantro is growing really nicely now as well. They’re all growing the 1st true leaves now.

Time Will tell me how bad I stunted the auto, but if I’m lucky not much. Now the plants seem to all be Happy and in harmony helping each other. Once the cilantro does it’s thing it’ll help the auto with the soil drying out more frequently. I’ll have to stunt the garlic though unless I’m in no risk of it swelling up by harvest.

[cannabissequoia]

Just LITFA for as long as you can. Then some more.

Imagine your seedline was a new goldfish in a bowl-- if you kept feeding & changing water too often it would probably die, right?

Consider getting some other indoor potted plants to fuss over like an orchid or a bonsai…

[Meesh]

@cannabissequoia

Consider getting some other indoor potted plants to fuss over like an orchid or a bonsai…

I believe this to be excellent advice! Personally, I like to fuss over my african violets. If you can make them happy, they will give you mass amount of blooms!

[HappyHemper]

Totally excellent advice @cannabissequoia ! I’ve been putting my OCD tendencies to use on my xmas cactus.

[Meesh]

@HappyHemper

I’ve been putting my OCD tendencies to use on my xmas cactus.

and it looks glorious this season, if I do say so myself!

[anon86068642]

I just tilled the soil a bit and got as many chunks of chips out as I could. Peat, wood, roots, IDC. It was keeping the soil beneath moist still after this long even under UV light. It’s about half empty of water now. I tilled it after weighing it to find it too heavy for my liking. I got a decent amount of chips and chunks of various kinds and for some reason there was a glass shard in there I found. Powder maybe, but sliver of glass is a bad thing no matter what.

The soil was feeling very compacted as well, so I tilled the first 2 inches of soil and accidentally killed the oregano seedling. There was another that just popped up today too. It was a healthy green color. It will be missed.
All double seedlings have been moved in different directions and when the strongest one appears I’ll pull the vestigial twin.

I have wasted light, so I’ll find something else to grow in there as well. I have plenty of soil. I’ll bring in a gallon jug/mug and work with it until it’s completely free of chunks and find out what my consistency is and if I’m better off with a early transplant after fixing the soil and amending it with perlite if it’s too dense and not airy enough after getting wet.

Growth has been progression nicely, but that rate it was drying was not good with that many seedlings at once. Now I’m doing LITFA, but that mulch had to be taken care of. Nothing was drying at the pace I wanted.

I got some Diamond OG shatter from my GF and it just knocks out anxiety. I’m not concerned that I killed the oregano at all like I was expecting to guard for.

After tilling the soil I did notice a lot of sand looking particles. I’m thinking some are the DE and see could be from the sand content in the soil I worked from my outside garden to get some rocks and sand for amendments. I wound up just removing the rocks, but I’m thinking I should have kept them in. They were no bigger than a marble in size. Some were flatter, but took up the same space roughly. Anyways that’s my update for what’s going on. I had been busy all day walking around from this morning to this evening. I’m tired and I’m going to bed. Best way to start my LITFA program as I wait for the soil to dry now that the mulch is gone. Well it’s in a container in case it is needed later for any reason.

[Meesh]

Check out this test posted by @MomOnTheRun easy peasy! Loam/Sand/Clay

Seed Run Co-Op Bodhi F2 DBHP - Give Away Has Ended

Now that our soil has rested for a couple days, lets see what texture we have to work with… [image] Sand is the 1st to settle as it has the largest particle size. Silt is the next to settle with a medium particle size and Clay is the last to settle with the smallest particle size… once the marks are made for each, the distance is then measured in mm: Sand - aeration - 9mm Silt - fertility - 13mm Clay- absorb nutrients- 3.5mm Now we have our distance, lets convert it to percentages…add up t…

This will totally help!

[anon86068642]

I know there’s a little clay mixed in the soil. When I processed my garden soil I noticed it was high clay, sand, and pebbles. It’s severely diluted with no more than a few cups of soil volume mixed into at least 4 cubic feet of soil up to 8 max. I’ll need to check my last grow when I posted what size bags I mixed in to be accurate.

Regardless I need to amend my soil and fix how compacted it gets. 2 weeks between watering is too long especially with a UV light shining on top it should be drying faster. Now that I tilled the topsoil and removed all mulch like pieces and the shard of glass let’s see how fast the soil dries.

Like the title says I’m still learning lessons. I want to learn from my mistakes and know better than to do certain things before the next grow when I have multiple plants going at once again. Plus it’ll help me a lot once I get a instinct for when to react and when to act. I’ve already found my niche with megacrop to the point where I can accurately measure it by eye and feel within 1g accuracy strangely. I still weigh it when I use it as I always have doubts regardless of how many times it happens

I was walking home while typing this.
I checked the plants and the soil has almost overnight dried up now LoL whoever it was that kept telling me to remove the mulch I’m sorry for being a stubborn ass. That was a literal night and day difference.
Pics now to show what I’m talking about.

As you can see I wasn’t able to completely remove every single piece, but anything of size was removed.

Is it just me or does the diodes on my concobs seem to be wide angle?

IDK if that even matters or if it’s just glare not where the light is pointing, but if those are the beams of light from the diodes it appears to have a 120° angle from the diodes. I’ll have to see if I can’t find out what they used in the lights.

Also here’s a long forgotten to post pic of temp and humidity I took it just now to see if the room is any different than the apartment.

It is. It’s 74f in here and 72f in the room.

The plants look a little nitrogen starved RN. The pot is pretty light now, but that scratch test showed me it’s still not time to water yet.

Anyone have a foliar feed recipe? I don’t have a lot, but I do have molasses, Epsom salts, fox farm grow big, megacrop, and raw sugar. I doubt I’d need anything sugary to foliar feed, but I mentioned my available options in case I have no idea what I’m talking about.

[anon86068642]

I did some research and went with 1.52g megacrop, 1.1g grow big, and 0.4g Epsom salts to 1 gallon/3.78 litres of water.
I tried to go 1/3 strength, but I wound up with closer to 1/2 strength. It’s almost clear and you can barely see the color of the nutrients. I cleaned out a eyeglass cleaner spray bottle and added 3 drops of soap to the bottle and added the mix to it and sprayed the tops and bottoms once I saw it was 75f in there and the stomata were open. It dried fast.

Did I foliar feed too early? I sprayed tops and bottoms both. When it’s time to water I have the mix in the fridge free from bad bacteria growth. I’ll take it out and let it reach room temperature before I water once the day they need water comes.

Maybe it’s just my hopeful imagination, but I swear they look better already. Foliar feeding doesn’t show that fast right?

[Esrgood4u]

The seedlings look really healthy but I can’t understand why people put multiple plants into a single pot. As the roots grow through the medium they are bound to get tangled up so up potting/re potting is just gonna cause damage to the root zone and stunt the plants.

[Northern_Loki]

If I’m not mistaken, I think the other plants are cover crop.

[Esrgood4u]

My bad I should have looked closer

[anon86068642]

Cover crop also. The garlic is sulfur fixing and
releases natural fungicide in the soil. Old school natural fungus gnat repellant.
The cilantro is for aphids, spider mites, and a cover crop.

Both have compatible root systems with cannabis being useful for companion planting letting plants be a little hardier. I’m trying to nail the ratio of food that they want as once I get the right ratio they’ll all regulate the intake of nutrients each other receive sharing excess and with a larger amount of roots that aren’t fine hair roots the soil should be regulating itself to a good level once the microbes all get to the levels that the plants like.

I’m sure I skipped over a lot and may have mispoke a part or more, but overall I like old-school farming techniques that stood the test of time as my methods supplementing any care needed to accommodate the indoor conditions while they’re seedlings.
Also having to compensate for the lack of clover RN is not fun LoL. I’ll work on getting it soon. I may just transplant one from outside if it’s the right type if I can’t wait

[Esrgood4u]

that’s a lot of hard work. I’ll stick to my coco and mega crop. I’ll be watching your thread as you progress keep up the good work.

[anon86068642]

It let’s me have some extra plants to fuss over too, but overall they want the same nutrients, just at different times. Once the cannabis plant reaches veg stage everything will be a lot easier as none of them want more food than the auto needs. And rn I just have to feed at foliar feed strength to keep nitrogen from getting locked out while the roots are growing.