Day 41 and still not much to report, Things are starting to swell up a bit and they should be finishing up in the next 3 weeks or so.
Since there isn’t much to report and this diary was late into the grow; I thought I would give a little detail on how things started, what I’m using and how often.
Beans were soaked in water for a few hours and placed between damp paper towels in gallon size freezer bag inflated and sealed. Exchanged air twice daily. When they popped and displayed taps they were placed in pre-soaked 1.5 RW cubes and planted in 32 oz cups with coco. Absolutely no nutes for the first 2 weeks, ever.
Using Coco Bliss coco. It works for me and 10 lb blocks average about $15 on amazon but I have seen them drop under $12 once.
Mykos is used on all planting and transplanting and that is the only time it is used.
My base nutes (Advanced pH perfect Sensi Coco grow and bloom) are used with a diluted strength every watering. I don’t track my ppm’s. I start out with very diluted nutes and gradually increase strength until I start to see a little tip burn, back it off a little and that’s where they stay. These get 5ml every watering or 1/4 recommended strength roughly 3 times per week.
Supplements are added with every watering when needed. When using RO I use Cal Mag Plus, when using tap water Epsom salts.
Veg: Myco+ and Cal Mag Plus or Epsom weekly. Silica and Azos every other week.
Flo: Flower Fuel, Molasses and Cal Mag Plus or Epsom weekly. Silica and Azos every other week.
I also use Advanced pH down. My RO is 6.5 and tap averages 7.5 so really no need for pH up in my situation.
At reduced strengths like I’m using the pH buffer in the nutes is not enough to correctly buffer my water.
Basically I try to keep things pretty simple and it seems to be working okay.
Hey @Undead-Toker you’ve got some mighty fine looking ladies there and they are frosting up nicely too. Hope your pollination took well and you are rewarded with healthy seeds.
I pretty much just hydrate this brand coco. With seedlings a good rinse wouldn’t hurt. I did have some minor burn a couple weeks in on these but could be the combination of a hot spot in the coco and 300ppm tap water. No need for a rinse on clones or transplanting. The next beans I pop I will not rinse either but use RO and see how it goes.
My only suggestion if you go coco is have a good pH meter before you get started. As long as you have a good feed schedule and give them what they need it’s pretty ez. I always feed mine at 5.9, a little lower if my runoff pops up.
It works for me and is my preference for growing medium. I’ve grown in various soil and soil less mixes as well as DWC buckets which I also love but it’s winter only for me because of summer temps.I actually started using coco to cut my soil and cut back on perlite, pretty soon I was full on coco.
Yeah @beacher I never worried about pH in soil either because of dolomite. I did my DWC run before I went pure coco so I already had a good combo meter. I’m using a Bluelab pH pen now. I think they run about $80 but you’ll need calibration cleaning and storage solutions too, Good pH meters are delicate but if you take care of them you can get a few years out of them. I don’t use mine a lot. I know it takes 10 drops of pH down to bring my tapwater to 5’9-6 after adding nutes.
It helps if you know how to read your plants too. I started this grow without a meter and just eyeballed them for the first 6 or so weeks. I usually only check my runoff if I see something’s wrong and know everything going in is good, which I haven’t needed to do on this grow so far.
Two in Flo that should be done in roughly 3 weeks. Four more (two of each pheno) that should be ready to flo when they are done.
Pheno 1 is the hardiest, has tighter node spacing and less stretch. It is the keeper and Pheno 2 will phase out after the next run.
Time to pop some new beans. I’m pretty sure what it’s going to be but will get the confirmation today. A couple dudes I know are going to do their first grow next year. Starting a winter veg with clones of Valley Ghash and one of these three to be planted outside when the frosts are done.
Did about an 8 hour soak and bagged the beans in a gallon freezer bag between damp paper towels. This was placed in a cardboard box, closed up and placed over my 10/20 heating pad. I just checked and a little over 24 hours later more than half of the beans have popped.
Will get a few pics up later when I get to planting them. Need to decide whether or not to start them in RW like I normally do or just straight to coco. Regardless I have some soaking/hydrating to do while I make up my mind.
All beans popped and are planted in coco with Mycos. Very quick germination time on these. The only thing these will get is one shot of Azos on the first watering and nothing else for the next 2 weeks.
