Oh wow, just wow.
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BK has since informed me that the ones he bought are called Hercules Pots, and are more of a net / pot hybrid. I looked and the 6" ones are sold out except for a few sites that have outrageous shipping prices.
The only real difference is the slots are more narrow. If the coco flushes out of the ones I bought I’ll buy these cloth nursery bags to line them. I used them a couple years ago to make my own coco cubes after being dissatisfied with the different ones I tried. The nursery bags on their own worked okay, but they ripped really easily and made moving them around hard. I imagine a combination of the net pots and nursery bags would work well. I might order them now and just do that.
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This little dude has fluffed up out of control. It’s hard to get a picture showing his winter coat in full glory.
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This Pulse soil sensor is fascinating. When I first transplanted the plants I was getting a maximum saturation in the mid 60s, and then it would quickly drop down into the 50s as the rockwool drained. From there it would slowly lower throughout the week until I reset it by hand watering. During this period the EC stayed pretty stable and mimicked saturation curve. As if the plants were feeding at the right EC and the water loss was result of that.
Now the maximum saturation is around 50% and quickly drops down into the mid 40s as the rockwool drains. Then its in the high 30s the next day and rapidly drops day by day. Regardless of how much or how often I set my watering cycles. I have to hand water to bring it back up more that a few points. Also the EC is acting as the polar opposite of the saturation level. I haven’t really changed the strength, it’s just doing it on its own.
My guess is that the roots have filled in and stolen space from the rockwool. I’ve felt it and it doesn’t feel very dry. I think there’s just much less pockets to hold water along with the roots drinking heavier.
I’m not going to try to fight it by hand watering constantly. I setup an elaborate automated system so that I wouldn’t have to do that anymore. Once a week is fine, but not every other day. Instead I’m just going to decrease the EC and try to find a nice wave to surf.
Small pots are like race cars.
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Had I not known this, I would have thought everything was fine. As the weeks went on I would have increased the EC. The two would have compounded and my plants would start to shown issues that I might have confused for deficiencies and pushed the strength even higher.
Now that I think about it, in the past I’ve used a syringe to take samples of runoff that was astronomically high. I was puzzled by it because I always kept the EC relatively low in comparison to grows before in bigger pots.
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This has me thinking. I bet there is a specific EC number that I could use throughout the entire grow. At least once the vegging plants get a certain size. It would be almost too strong in the beginning and almost too weak in the end, which is when you want to taper it down anyway.
Lights are like this with a scrog net. If I set it up perfectly the PAR on the canopy is the right strength. Once I stop tucking them under the net during early flower, the plants grow at about the right speed for the distance of the colas to match the PAR that the want.
That might be confusing to read. But yeah, self regulation is nice.
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They look fantastic.
Can you post the EC and saturation plots you are seeing?
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The green is the saturation and the yellow is the ec. Which isn’t the actual ec going in. It an algorithm based off of the EC and the type of medium. Rockwool reads a lot higher than say regular soil because its food is more easily accessed.
The EC is hot af right now. Tomorrow I’m going to flush them with what’s in the res and then mix a weaker batch.
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The semi flattening out at the end was me manually triggering the watering system a bunch of times to try to lower the EC.
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I’d be interested to see someone’s chart who is growing with larger cubes of rockwool. Also 3 gallon pots of coco. I’d guess that there would be much less extreme peaks and valleys showing. I’m going to use 2l coco pots for my next grow, so I’m looking forward to checking out that data.
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Interesting. Do they provide a raw conductivity plot that is used to calculate the other figures?
Is your reservoir EC 2.5?
Yeah, it’s called bulk EC.
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They sure look good. I don’t understand the bulk EC calculation enough to grasp what’s going on there.
What happened with the flush today?
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I’m a little confused by it myself. The bulk EC is lower than what I’m mixing in the res, so that’s odd. It’s much lower than the PWEC. I moved the sensor to a horizontal position in the bottom cube of rockwool. I was sticking it downward through both rockwool cubes. I know that the bottom cube drains the top cube, so maybe this will give me more accurate data.
I stuck the sensor in this pot of coco, but I hadn’t watered it yet, so it wasn’t giving me much useful info. The coco seems to be closer to the input ec though.
I also switched over to the log reading as PPM. I used it for the first 6 or so years of growing. I didn’t start using EC until I started posting on forums and didn’t want to hear them complain. I still have to look at a chart to know exactly what the EC is. I have a rough idea, but I’m never sure enough of myself to not look.
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Also I’d like to know what causes this. The leaves aren’t drooping because they aren’t limp. It’s like reverse praying. I felt where the stem meets the leaf, and it’s a hard 90° bend like it’s meant to be a permanent feature. Two rows are doing it, but the plants look really healthy and they both have the nicest root systems.
Some of the plants of the same strain did it when I grew them a couple of years ago. They finished nicely. I can’t really recall any other strains doing it, so maybe it’s genetic? Another pheno was a mutant.
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Maybe that’s what people mean when they have a “floppy” pheno?
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Are those the outside rows that were a little behind originally?
Last time I called one pheno “Jurassic Grumpz” because of how the leaves were angled downward. They were also really thick and had a prehistoric look to them. That was the pheno I was going to turn into a mother, but I lost it along with everything else. That’s actually why I went into a long pheno hunt. I wanted to find something else that impressed me as much. Then it became addictive.
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