Greetings from the land down under. Love the journal. Started following a month or so back. First off the photography is most excellent; tells a great story. One can never get tired of “Bud Porn” The variation of topics and detailed discussions within the thread on top of your journal has been most enjoyable. Great vibe.
I enjoyed reading your transition from soil to coco; love a good scientific approach and the tuning to ones specific “use case”. I too like fiddling with me plants; moving em around and stuff and have gone the hand watering route with coco.
I have limited myself to a small space; to grow small plants; on purpose. Main theme I’m woking towards is bonsai style however I’m still running a seperate tent that will run my favourite heirlooms.
The tent I chose is 80cm x 80cm x 160cm foot print; With already limited height to work with; raising the plants inside the tent was out of question.
The room the tent is in has heaps of space to go up. The platform is 50 cm larger than the tents foot print and sits about 33cm high (1ft-ish). Eventually I’ll add a tray connected to a simple drain through the bottom of the tent/platform and into a reservoir. Tray will tilt slightly forward.
Thanks for chiming in and I appreciate the kind words. Always cool to see others have been following along and enjoy the rambling nature of the thread. Sadly, the closet-room that I grow in has a low ceiling, so I couldn’t elevate my tent any higher in my situation. I’ve actually been revisiting the condensate pump idea from that “cocoforcannabis” website a bit. I’ll have to figure out a secure way to route drainage to a bucket outside of the tent in order for that to work. Perpetually in the brainstorm mode, and haven’t really moved much further on it haha…
Bogus; with no room to go up with the tent…I too looked at that bucket setup but has way too many hoses and “stuff”. Puts plants into a fixed position; which is fine if that what you after.
I do not understand why there are no exit points for hydro setups built into the tents. I plan to just cut a hole and run the host out…
Looking forward to your next round progressing… Cheers mate…
Everything is drinking heavily right now - I’m having to water in about 1-2 GAL either every day, or every other day lately. The tallest SSDD in the back is starting to develop a small amount of leaf frost too.
For all of the plants combined? Or for each individual plant?
My theory about certain “Sativas” is that they start out in sort of jungle-ish or otherwise harsh environments. Growing broad leaves at the beginning of their lives makes sense to me, simply because they have to compete for survival.
When you hand water , are you just mixing the amount per gallon as they recommend? Or do you test EC on each batch? And I assume the jacks if pre- mixed can’t sit for the next day if you have left overs right?
I’ve let it sit for a few days without issue. Nothing precipitates out or anything. The PH drifts a bit upwards over time but it’s still in a mostly acceptable range.
I aim to get as close as I can to 3.79G of part A on my scale and then pour it in a flask with a magnetic stir bar & 500ML of water. After about 1 minute I weigh out .9G of epsom salts and add it to that flask as well.
I come back a few hours later and I pour that flask into an empty 1 GAL jug. I refill the flask, weigh out 2.5G of Part B and then start filling the jug with water. Once half full I stop filling the jug, grab the flask that has been mixing Part B, pour it in, and add 1ML of PH down. I then fill the jug to the top with water making 1 GAL of nutrient solution, which I then bring into my tent area.
If I need more I just scale it up in a 5 GAL bucket.
My water falls into what they consider to be “pure water” after checking multiple years of water reports from my water company, so that may be shifting things in my favor a bit. They do have a Target EC listed on their Nutrition Schedule, but that mostly seems like it has to do with swapping around ratios and “bloom boosters”. I don’t own an EC meter and at the moment I have no plan to buy one. If you have “pure water” then I doubt it’s an essential. No clue about other water sources that may have a higher EC / ppm. Maybe a giant reservoir where a lot of evaporation is taking place? No experience there either.
I really don’t like messing around with stuff too much, whether it’s changing the strength on a weekly basis or adjusting nutrient ratios by using different products at different times. Maybe some day, but 3-2-1 from start to finish seems pretty nice so far. If I were to adjust things I’d do it after I’m much more experienced with the default 3-2-1 grow and slowly adjust things one at a time.
"Targeted to achieve the optimal nutrient balance for water sources that have low concentrations of calcium and magnesium (40 ppm Ca/Mg or less). "
Cool, interested to hear how it works out if you end up giving it a try. In the near future I’ll try making concentrated bottles for my veg plants, and based on how that goes I may swap over to doing that for flower as well to save time, rather than weighing and mixing every watering.
I ended up borrowing the Blulab from my mentors place. My tap water comes out at .8EC! After I mix up the recommended 3-2-1 strength I get a 2.6EC. PH falls around 6.8. So far I’ve just been hammering them with that. Fresh sowed seedlings as well. They look…perfect.
For mixing I made small stock solutions and that has been the bees knees. 10ML of each with a syringe real quick into a gallon. Very quick. All I have to do now is grab some PH down and find out how much is needed to bring things to 5.5-6.
Nice to hear you’ve made a concentrated solution and are happy with it. Did you have any problems dissolving it @ that concentration? I guess I’ll try to mix 37.9G of Part A into 100ML of water later on as a test run…
Yeah, that should really simplify things in the long run though I’d think. It’s still the 3:2:1, and you’d still need to use a Part A (A + Epsom) and Part B concentrate.
I did a test of 37.9G of Part A and 9.7G of Epsom salts in 200ML of water (half the strength that @ABushOfKush is using) and with the hot plate and stir bar they both dissolved very fast. I have a box of 20ML syringes and may just stick with this dilution ratio (less concentrated offers more buffer for measuring error). Will try it out on some veg plants over the weekend…
I didn’t have any issue dissolving but I did get my tap water running as hot as it could. A few minutes of shaking in a bottle and it looked good to me. After about a week there is some precipitate starting in the bottle of 5-12-26 but the epsom and 15-0-0 both are perfect. Not a problem with a good shake before using.
I’ve been curious to try this for a while now. Really happy to see you guys giving it a go!
I’m curious whether these stock solutions would freeze for long term storage. I may have to try that out and see what happens. I would love to be able to “meal prep” a months worth of nutrients at a time.
The platform is 50 cm larger than the tents foot print and sits about 33cm high (1ft-ish). Eventually I’ll add a tray connected to a simple drain through the bottom of the tent/platform and into a reservoir. Tray will tilt slightly forward.
