Saffrons First proper grow and beyond

[Saffron1]

Grow light: Vivosun Aero light 150 SE
Tent: 32x32x63
Nutrients: fox farm liquid trio+CALiMAGic
Medium: Peat x Coco x Soil x

I’m using Vivosuns all in one smart grow system, which I’m very honestly disappointed with. Not for its performance, but I feel that the light probably needs to be more well… everything.

Definitely going to be using a better brand for any further purchases unless I find a wicked deal. Their E42a controller isn’t compatible with much of the extra hardware I find myself looking at.

I got accepted to test seeds for Homegrown Genetics, and popped 5x of their Super Fried Applez. Began germinating on July 24th, planted on the 26th (58 hours or so after germinating).

July 30th was their first set of true leaves, and where I cut my losses on a Taproot that never saw it’s full potential,

At this point, the first bit of nutrients were added to the pot I would eventually transplant into and the medium moistened after a good flush
(CALiMAGic, .25ml/l, fox farm grow big .1ml/l) pH of the initial moistening was 6.1 going in and runoff was 6.3(and I got to use my brand spanking new freshly calibrated PH20!)

I transplanted a bit early, August 2nd or so, as I had to be away from the house for over 16 hours and could easily see my little jiffy pots going dry and my little seedlings being all but dead.

They were fed again on August 6th, 5.8ph going in, 3ml of calmag and 1.75ml of grow big per l of water, (2Ls created, about 500ml per pot.

I know this isn’t ideal, and I would like to be watering to runoff at least daily. I was going to get some coco to mix in with my current mix since it’s probably 60% or greater peat. The store I was gonna hit locally didn’t have any so this is where I stand.

Despite the troubles, they look pretty happy

General grow goals:
1 - Get ppm meter/check the ppm of my tap water (it’s not great)
2 - Design backyard solar still or look into efficacy of charcoal filters/berkees at improving EC numbers
3 - buy 2.5l grow bags
4 - stronger lights for tent. I’m debating on a few options, will update when I’m settled
5 - Build an Aeroponic cloner (I think I have all the parts, plenty of aquarium stuff laying around!)
6 - Buy Sodium Thiosulfate and Silver Nitrate, (only testing that once I have a viable cloning method in case I screw the pooch and kill a plant)

[Gpaw]

@Saffron1

I’m using Vivosuns all in one smart grow system, which I’m very honestly disappointed with. Not for its performance, but I feel that the light probably needs to be more well… everything.

Definitely going to be using a better brand for any further purchases unless I find a wicked deal.

Have a look at AC Infinity, they are producing some well designed products.
I rather like their fans and controllers.

Cheers
G

[GYOweed]

I tried to grow saffron outdoors and it did everything like growing and reproducing but wouldn’t flower.
Your water quality is more important than PPM.
There should be a ppm report public from where you get your water.
The rest are dreams so you can leave them there until you figure out how to maximize growth and health.

The ph your RO, 72f is needed, VPD is where you anally need to be, measure ppm in water for dry nutes crowd are to be left in their crappy blogs from stupid white label seedbanks and ignored.

Ppm of anything is grams per liter 1g is 1000 ppm thats all so a meter is gives you an idea for TDS only.

Your goal is keeping them oxygenated, green, not stretching for light, keeping LST below 80f (use an IR thermometer), get bushy hair covered leafes and stems, time the roots and add organics slowly and more frequently as possible to keep the medium oxygenated. Blablabla you’ll figure it out.
Forgot meat thermometer especially when its 60 or 120f outside.

[Saffron1]

I looked at em before making my purchase, and I deeply regret not throwing down the extra $100 for the same style of tent kit.

What I haven’t seen is their controllers’ software. More user friendly and intuitive than Vivosuns? :o I’m honestly afraid of even getting another light due to compatibility issues as things are, and budget won’t permit me to buy a whole new tent kit for quite a while

[Saffron1]

Man that’s a rough one, my indoor temps stay at 80 during the daytime (peak energy plan here, and my lights and etc are timed accordingly).

I just fear not being able to maintain my vpd for veg and keeping the tent at the cool temperature I know it needs.

My vpd is at 0.8 when I’m properly micromanaging it, but fluctuates up to 1.9 when I’m not

I’m just running a bunch of containers full of water in the tent and hanging a wet rag/redampening it every few hours to try to keep that in check, because, despite being in a room with a 140 gallon aquarium, my vpd in that room stays between 1.4-1.7k

I’ll amazon myself a humidifier and try to piece together the prototype for a solar still today, though, and see if that improves the situation

[GYOweed]

Oh no I was being fecious! Last sentence I said ignore them. Hence the pics of my temps saying otherwise to the typical google result.
80 is fine…i would use a cheap ac for the last 4 weeks just because quality…for before that it will work itself out once you figure out what pot size and medium will give you that humidity or lack of Naturally in your tent.
Looks like you want humidity just like our situation in vegas.
Fabric pot, over 80% coco…a healthy plant will turn into a literal swamp cooler almost.
Aim a fan at it and it will cool a lot and give off even more.
Too much? Turn up exaust fan.
There’s one caveat for coco…needs prep work. Organic or synthetic doesn’t matter.
Coco holds more roots AND oxygen than perlite.

[Saffron1]

I’m sitting at probably 60% peat rn. Id like to lower that to about 25-30% so I plan on buying some coco, perlite, and earthworm castings.

I’m actually spoiled for choice on liquid nutrients though I don’t know how organic they are.

I have the foxfarms liquid trio, CALiMAGic, essential pH stuff (and id like to learn to mix my own pH down, since I dabble in chemical mixing and have citric, muriatic, and phosphoric acids), some leftover foop, rhino stalk stuff (silica supplementation iirc) as well as a cultured solutions growers pack combo (which says is designed for recirculating systems, has anyone used this in a coco coir setup though?)

Should I add any dry amendments or can I possibly get by with this?

[Saffron1]

Some outdoor plants that a friend recently gifted me. I know they don’t look great but they looked much worse 3 days ago. I know nearly nothing about them. Should I try to keep em going anyway?

[dingys]

I see you’re having space issues now!

[Saffron1]

I made my decisions. For my main tent I’ve got 17 gallons of coco and 3 gals of perlite on the way, as well as a viparspectra 70w grow light (for a tent total of 220 or just over 30w per sq ft), mechanical timer (I don’t like or trust Vivosuns app to be compatible with other lights so I’ll just mimic the schedule for the light i have in the app) and a tds meter so I can test the real world efficacy of a few different filtration options I have

@dingys

Haha, only for the time being. This is just a cheapo 2x2x4 I got from the bin store I have sideways to bring em in while it’s over 100 out till I can get holes dug in the shaded area in the backyard. Root boiling seems like a sad fate for the plants.

[Saffron1]

Started LSTing the biggest of the batch today. The rest will have to wait for a couple more days.

Running a bit dry because I’ll be transplanting/removing as much of the media as possible and moving to their forever home 5gal fabric pots

[Saffron1]

You were right man. Thanks for the advice. I get again transplanted early so the root ball full of peat wouldn’t cause an issue and made -15 gallons of coco coir. Added 2 gallons of perlite and about 2 gallons of the predominantly peat mix I had and my vpd has been so stable I’ve actually had to set a humidity maximum on my smart controller system (which I’m grateful for now but still dislike the softwares godawful interface). But I’ve been getting consistent 0.7 readings all day since I swapped the peat for coco

Added the extra 70w viparspectra light and turned my main light down to 50% so I’d get a more stable and uniform ppfd rating. I’ve yet to go in there with photone but it looks like a more uniform brightness to the naked eye, however I wish it had separate veg/bloom options because the colors are noticably warmer than my Vivosun in veg mode.

Oh well, if I decide to make a grow box or something of the sort I’ll definitely use it for that, and then move the 150w vivosun to my 2x2 and get a better light for the 2.7x2.7

Also started using the cultured solutions liquid kit I got the other day, started with everything roughly 1/4 recommend strength.

[Saffron1]

I made about 1 gallon for the first water/feed to give one liter to each 5 gallon bag.

However I think this was in error and believe this will be a waste of nutrients. I should probably make half that per watering (if that) to water towards the middle of the pot and just keep the outside moist with ph’ed dechlorinated+filtered water

[GYOweed]

Welcome. about coco? Yea it’s the best im doing outdoor organic with it now I cant wait to bake n recycle some for indoors soon.
Last time I used peat were these plug sacks that kept pissing 5.0 run off and killing my seedlings.
i prep my coco thats new with tap flush (my water has a lot of cal mag) then use some old GH trio soak then some dr eath or wahtever comes with micrbrobes to prep it with bio.

[Saffron1]

Alright with my current setup (viparspectra 70w 100% strength vivo 150 aero light @50% in veg) I’m able to reach 35+ dli at the middle of each plant presently
All within a 5 dli range of each other
Is this good enough till they’re a bit bigger?

[Saffron1]

Not to toot my own horn but the internodal spacing on these is tight as a real motherfucker. Nothin like the days of hanging blurple Chinese LEDs from the bars in my closet and starting plants 5 feet under them.

[Saffron1]

Well I learned today that my pots must actually be elevated from the drip pan/runoff catcher, not just casually placed on top of it.

i put some smooth river rocks in the dedicated.drip trays, elevated the pots about half an inch

I’ll show y’all when it’s time for lights on

It was a 5 year old post here (from a banned user to boot) that taught me that. Thankfully I think I caught it before it ruined the whole grow I

[Saffron1]

Possibly a dumb question but all the plants in my tent have been receiving the same nutrient, light, etc.

So this confuses me. The plant on the lower left appears to be suffering a minor nutrient deficiency, despite being the slowest growing. Why would this be, and also, would I be correct in identifying nitrogen as the culprit?
I’ll also post my largest plant in this batch, who looks incredibly healthy

[Saffron1]

Runoff pH - 6.5
Runoff PPM - 420

Input ppm - 550
Input pH - 5.8-6.2 (6.0 on the watering I measured this runoff with)

[Saffron1]

Currently per gallon I’m using 1.75ml veg A, 1.75ML of Veg B, 1.5ml of calmag, and needed 2.7mls of pH down to get it to test at 5.8

I’ll increase to 2.25mls/g when all the plants are ready for their first topping/pruning (probably about 3 days from now)
I’ll also use some pH downed water to keep the outer area of the pots coco kinda moist.

I’m not seeing any progression of the deficiencies. Which makes me think it was just a lack of regular nutrients (considering a diy auto-drip to feed each plant about 250mls of nutrients solution every 8-12 hours)