Pirates First Grow

[Pirates]

Pirates Grow

Grow Log #1

Weeks1- week 2 of flower are written with the benefit of hindsight and working within the limits of my memory. So the exact dates and numbers may be +/-.

Seeds planted in rockwool cube(2in) Dec 1st 2020 (lol)

Lights: Started with 1 Spider Farmer SF1000 Now have 2

Nutrients:

AN 3 part ph perfect

Botanicare Cal-Mag

Seeds:

White Widow Fem (Seedsman)

Northern Lights Fem (Nirvana) x2

Veg

Week 1-~8

.

White Widow was transplanted directly into a 2 gallon hempy bucket with pure perlite about a week after seeds were planted. For the first week I only watered with plain RO water.

Northern lights #1 was lagging behind and was transplanted into a solo cup hempy with pure perlite. Several things went wrong here. This plant came out slightly deformed and didn’t seem to be growing

( 1.5ec/5.6ph@feeding 6.3-6.7+ runoff). My hempy buckets can hold 1 liter of fluid before running off. I regularly feed them 1.5 liters per day, all at once to provide plenty of fluid exchange.

Notes/Things learned

While I rinsed the perlite with tap water I never rinsed with PH adjusted water. So I’ve battled high PH this whole time. Sometimes as high as 7.2 yikes. This leads to almost weekly flushing with ph adjusted PLAIN RO water to keep the PH even around 6.1-.3. This is where I learned about osmotic stress. Flushing with pure water then applying a strong nutrient (2.1ec) solution leads to an unhappy plant. This led to considerable stress put on the White Widow. She showed yellow leaves with very thin new growth. The solution seems to have been to either flush with a low dose nutrient or flush with pure water and then apply a low dose nutrient solution. I also moved the lights up about 2 inches (about 22in about canopy) so that could have been part of it.

Fans blowing directly on a small plant isn’t good. I didn’t think the wind was that strong but she clearly thought differently.

Fill buckets up closer to top so air flows across the top of the substrate.

Water with a consistent nutrient solution, Work up the EC slowly.

So that brings us to day February 17th, 2021 (10days after light change)

Current stats:

Temps- 68-76f

Humidity- 36-48%

Nutrient solution- 3ml/liter micro/grow/bloom (about 1.5ec/5.6ph@feeding 6.3-6.7+ runoff)

Over the last couple days I’ve trimmed a significant amount off of NL#1 to encourage focused bud production. The same has been done to WW but to a lesser extent. NL#2 is behind in budsite production but she’s working on it. All plants look happy. NL#1 has some rust colored spots on some of the larger fan leaves, I’m guessing PH in the bucket is creeping up. may be time to flush them out. I’ll test the runoff.

[Floyd]

Welcome @Pirates to OG! Im looking forward to following along.

[Gpaw]

Hey @Pirates, welcome to Overgrow!

I’ll pull up a chair.

Cheers
G

[Tejas]

Welcome @Pirates to OG! Nice grow btw.

[Sasquatch]

Looking good @Pirates !!! Like how you post, this is what I learned from this…Is for sure the way forward!!!

[G-paS]

@Pirates

Seeds planted in rockwool cube(2in) Dec 1st 2021

WOW! I must have missed the whole year
welcome to OG, the community that spreads the

[misterbee]

Welcome!!! You’re off to a G-R-E-A-T start, indeed. If not disagreeable to company, I’m gonna take over that far corner there. Don’t worry, brought my own refreshments, settling in for the Show. Continued success on your endeavors. Do stay safe, take special care and, indeed, be well…mister

[Pirates]

Heh oops fixed!

[Who]

welcome to og @Pirates and hey awesome first post!

[Pirates]

Update Feb 23, 2021,

Thank you all for the encouragement.

I have a few things to report.

First, the rust spots that were starting to appear on NL#1 have started showing on most of the older fan leaves of NL#1(barely starting to see signs of it on NL#2 but not on the WW). I believed this to be caused by the high PH (runoff was at 6.9). Also, the tips of the WW plant are burning, just the very tip of the new leaf growth. So I moved the light up a little higher (currently 18" above tallest top @ 100% output). I flushed the WW and NL#1 with 2 gallons degassed and PH adjusted (5.8) tap water and 1 gallon of 1/2 strength nutrient solution(about 0.7ec) each. This brought the PH in both containers to a more reasonable 6.1.

The day after the flush while inspecting the plants I noticed an uninvited guest… A fungus gnat and then another… Fuck… I find them annoying at the best of times and down right infuriating in my garden. So off to the store for diatomaceous earth and sticky bug traps. There don’t seem to be many YET, so i’ll try to nip this quickly.

Other than that I’m feeling pretty good about where the plants are at. Though I do have a couple questions.

1. The copper colored spots on the older fan leaves. It hasn’t shown itself on the WW but has on both NL, so what is more likely, It is a manifestation of the high PH, or that it is a cal/mag def causing it? Both the NLs are showing symptoms and they are both in coco/perlite. The WW is in pure perlite and hasn’t shown the same symptoms. I’m led to understand that coco grown plants need more cal mag. Thoughts?
   
   
   
2. The burnt tips on the WW, light burn or high PH? The manufacturer says 12-18inch above the canopy. I’m at the high end of that now and was at about 15-16 before I raised the light. The PH was also at 6.9 so… Seems like that’d do it too. Thoughts?
   
   

While hempy has been fun…(Eh.) I’m looking forward to the end of this grow to try a different style. This system was a “Damn it! I want to start NOW but don’t have time to plan/buy a proper hydro system” system. Hindsight being what it is, I could have done a 2-3gallon DWC bucket this time of year. Alas, my cool weather is fading and as such my grow tent temps and reservoir temp will be a considerable issue that will need to be addressed in the next round. I’m looking for a low profile hydro setup. I like DWC but in the summer I doubt I’d be able to keep a reservoir that small at a safe temperature. So perhaps a 2 bucket RDWC system with an external reservoir? I suppose there are a multitude of ways to go with that. RDWC, Ebb and Flow buckets, recirculating continuous drip system. I’m not sure if that’s a thing but sounds like it should work. It’d basically be a bucket NFT system.

Any advice on a good system for growing basically on the ground? Should I really just go soil? Organic Perhaps? This is all for personal use so yield isn’t really that big of a factor to me.

Thank you for stopping by,

Pirates

The one on the left and the middle are the same strain, is the difference in growth a difference in phenotypes or the difference between LST and topping? Little A little B kind of thing?

[ShiskaberrySavior]

May I suggest looking into octopots there’s a few growers using them on the site . I ran one outdoors last summer with great results using promix for the medium . It’s like your plants are on autopilot.

[Pirates]

That is a fantastic idea! Thank you so much! I like the 3 gallon that may be just right!

[Pirates]

So… Things happened. Some good. Some bad. Fuck it… ROLL UM!

Damn my photography skills need some work…

Anyways.

We’ve got nutrient burn everywhere and we’ve got buds falling over on one plant (not the worst problem to have NGL). I started the flush a day ago, so I guess we are in the home stretch. Most of the trichomes are cloudy and standing up straight (Unlike some of the buds) and I’m starting to see a few ambers pop here and there.

I guess I should go over what I believe to have caused these ghastly leaves.

Advanced Nutrients 3 part dosage reads, Use 4ml/L in all weeks of the plants life. It says this on all three bottles. So that is the ratio I went with mixing at full strength and diluting to my desired EC (working from .8-1.7 EC from mid veg to beginning of flower). The first week of flower I started noticing small rust colored spots appearing on fan leaves, specifically the once in the most direct light. You can see what it progressed into. Fucking ugly.

Starting off it really seemed like a Cal Mag def, LED lights, CoCo and perlite mix, RO water, seems like that’d be it. So I added calmag and it got worse, noticeably and quickly. So I did a full 3 gallon flush on all three girls. slapped in some .7 EC nut mix ( at that recommended ratio ). I figured I’d give them a couple days of slowly working the nutes back up and I’d see some improvement. Nope… Further decline. At this point I’m racking my brain and luckily found some advise from @lefthandseeds in another thread " K <> Ca <> Mg are all antagonistic toward each other, so over supply of one can easily cause deficiency of another." Thanks for that lefthandseeds! This is where gains were finally made. With this advise in mind I decided to take out the calmag (which I knew was not recommended with the AN 3part to begin with) and re-think my nutrient ratios. A few google searches later I came across a 3:2:1 approach. Bloom/Micro/Grow switching grow and bloom relative to the stage. I decided to give that mix a try, and boom goes the dynamite. Over the next couple of days the plants took off. The leaves healed what they could and the buds started to swell. Clearly I still have issues with what now appears to be nitrogen toxicity? But I’ve started the flush anyways so kind of a moot point now.

That will about wrap up the GROW part of this log. I’ll update on the harvest process along the way.

I’m starting new seeds tomorrow. GDP/Critical Purple Kush/Northern Lights. GDP and CPK will be going the distance. NL will be grown out as a mother. I’m going with a basic soil grow with a big dose of LITFA.

That is all for now folks!

-Pirates

[khaoohs]

Lil crispy on the leaf tips, the flowers look great.

[Gpaw]

A fellow serial plant abuser!

Great recovery!
Actually, stressing them like that is a good way of finding herms. …More important if you are making seeds

Cheers
G