Thanks for sharing, this is the kind of info really valuable and useful, what comes from your own experience and results. Appreciate taking your time to explain it so profusely, cheers … 
5 Likes
You’ve convinced me to go back to a top-drip system for my next run. My best grows in the past were DTW, but I think I can do it much better than before.
I’ve got my new system almost set up, and I gotta say I’m pretty stoked about trying it again after watching your quick turnaround 
6 Likes
OK! Where did I put those @ReikoX beans? I’m all in on some more autos due to your inspiration. Thanks for that @TrevorLahey! Beautiful stuff!
5 Likes
It’s usually only an issue during the first few weeks as the coco settles and sifts in the pots. After the first couple reservoir changes you stop seeing much coco beig returned to the reservoir. I do have a filter bag here but it’s just another point of failure and I wont use it unless things get gunked up bad.
4 Likes
Things are rocking in the indoor grow. RH has been a bit higher than I’m comfortable with. I’m running the dehumidifier during the day but can’t run it at night as it sometimes trips the breaker when it kicks in. I finally bit the bullet and ordered a proper 6" exhaust fan that I’m hoping will at least get things a bit less damp.
Also I have been upgrading the circulation fans. The Sunbeam Blizzards have been out of stock online for a while and I really like the one I’ve been using in the SP250 tent. I found one locally and it’s lime green and it’s awesome!
Dont mind the redneck engineering to get this thing mounted to a pole. LOL
Oh and here are some plants!
These bushy FAMs are gonna need some leaf plucking soon, especially with RH pushing 75% in the evenings. The leaf damage is mostly from leaves laying on leaves they look beat up but theyll be fine. Kinda wish they’d start stretching though so I can air out their bottoms.
All Dark Sparks in this tent. Been leaf tucking on these too, and they’ve got some decent side branching going on.
15 Likes
They are coming on Trev the fams seem to be greener than the sparks, are they getting the same mix. I like the fan set up, so long as it works its good, looks like one of my attempts with a re purposed humidifier fan, I should of added the string as a fail safe, like yours, as it was constantly popping off the pole and landing on plants lol.
4 Likes
Things are slow, but alive, in the outdoor bed:
The clones I was “gifted” are full of what I would say are spider mites judging by the stippling damage. I dont really want to get too close to find out haha.
I have 4 more regs to be planted in the bed today. I know it’s late but beggars cant be choosers and I just want to fill the bed up.
Some myco in the hole (I think its DynoMyco but it was given to me from an unmarked sample pack.) And in she goes.
Now that all the plants are in the bed it’s time to top dress around the plants with a few tablespoons of Gaia Green 4-4-4 dry amendments:
Now I water them in with some SeaBoost. It’s a locally sourced kelp fertilizer that is rich in micronutrients and contains mostly ascophyllum nodustrum which grows abundantly here on our shores.
I’m trying to keep things all organic here. I top dressed with blood and bone meal a couple weeks ago and I realize all these top dressings and amendments take time to work but I’m really hoping things are kicking into gear now.
There are a lot of weeds in my bed, luckily I think most of it is clover?
I planted a perimeter of marigolds about a month ago and they’re all up and hopefully will start blooming soon for some pest repulsion.
11 Likes
Yep your are correct I can spot that from 10 ft now with all my experience of the little bastards. If you are going to keep them I would strip off all the damaged leaves and spray the fuck out of them, while they are in veg.
Takes roughly 2 weeks for amendments to get into the system, so I will add bloom stuff just as they go into flower, when indoors, so when they finished their stretch its all ready on the dining table, waiting for them lol.
3 Likes
They were way worse when I first got em a couple weeks ago. I stripped off their worst leaves but had to leave something on them for photosynthesis. Looks like there is still an active colony though as even their new growth is showing stippling.
I get them here and there outside every year. It just comes with the territory I suppose and I always assumed mother nature keeps them in check as they’ve never gotten as bad as the aphids.
*Oh and the big ones have aphids now too.
And some caterpillar munching going on.
Maybe tomorrow evening I will hit them with some End-All and inoculate them with BTk.
I did the bone and blood meal 2 weeks ago so maybe things will pick up soon. The added Gaia Green is sure to help too, in a couple weeks of course. I have a bucket of 2-8-4 for bloom too, if we can even get there.
2 Likes
So things were going great… until they weren’t… in the indoor grow
Turns out you CAN overwater coco. I was seeing some nute burn on my plants so my wise idea was to lower the runoff by running the pumps for like 10m until the runoff matched the input EC.
Well all the Dark Sparks didnt like it and one of the FAMs in the other tent REALLY didnt like it and yeah… things kinda went to shit again.
So now it’s been near 30hrs since the waterlogged plants have been watered and they’re still quite heavy and still yellowing and dropping leaves. I’m still watering the others which arent waterlogged and they seem fine albeit still recovering from the EC spike and I am hoping things will turn around for the sick plants.
14 Likes
I’m sure they will, they are strong ladies, just give them some time …
5 Likes
Well it was a tough week for the girls. Adjusting watering and feed rates and hoping for the best while watching some plants nearly die due to my meddling, and waiting for waterlogged plants to, well, lighten up.
Woke up this morning to an empty res and 3 nearly dead plants. I didnt anticipate them going from 5gal a week to 5gal in 48hrs. I picked off the dead leaves and got them wet then gave them a proper feeding.
The plants that were really sick last week are starting to come around now. Just had to let them dry out a bit before getting them back to automated watering. I have the ability to limit flow rate to individual plants so I dialed it down to about 50% of the volume the other plants are getting.
16 Likes
Saturday night is party night in the tent, the girls were thirsty 
They look pretty good, couple look like they have hangovers though 
6 Likes
I sowed a bunch to make “plugs” for my transplants & watched it become an aphid & thrip factory & it’s getting composted. 
4 Likes
These are all somewhere around the 45 day mark now, they’re hanging in there and dont seem to be getting (too much) worse than before and it should still provide a bountiful harvest.
Last week I spotted some pollen sacs on 3 of the 4 FAMs I had going. I recognized one of the plants was for sure a GTxSBR and I’ve learned in the past that if you pluck off all the lower vegetation around week 5-6, no more sacs will grow.
The other one was different though, the sacs went all the way up and stopped 2 or 3 nodes from the top. I took a chance and stripped like 80% of its vegetation off, I scratched and pinched off all the flower sites at the nodes to prevent further flowers from growing on them.
Then I checked what I think was a DDxSBR and it too had a few sacs but only on the very bottom node so I just plucked off all that stuff too.
I swear I can just look at a female plant and make it turn male haha.
Oh I finally caved and bought a proper exhaust fan recently as I conceded my DIY inline fans were just not cut out for hot, humid summers. This 6" Lumo-X one had good reviews and a reasonable price tag so I picked it up and I am very happy. So powerful I can run it on its lowest setting and it can easily exhaust BOTH of my tents.
I really wanted an AC Infinity unit as they are brushless and much quieter but they had been sold out for months because they gave all their units away to Youtubers and social media influencers in exchange for favorable exposure. Tsk tsk.
Outdoor has been, well, I dont know it’s been weird. First of all the plants are loaded with pests. Spider mites, aphids, cannapillars, and pretty much every other pest in the book is living in this little ecosystem I’ve built. I treated them all with End-all and gave em a good hosing on a couple occasions, and innoculated them with BTk to help with the lepidoptera issue I’m having. The good news is theres also lots of beneficial in there keeping things from becoming a disaster. Ladybugs are colonizing like crazy so there must be a lot of food for them hehe.
The plants all were starting to rapidly deteriorate last week, leaves turning yellow and dropping seemingly overnight.
So I got to work on adding some more nutrition to the soil. I top dressed the entire bed with a 1:1 mix of Gaia Green 4-4-4 and 2-8-4 organic dry amendments, then scratched it into the surface, then watered it in with a heavy dose of MegaCrop V3 as well as an ascophyllum nodusum based seaweed fertilizer.
The wind swept away alot of the yellow stuff so it’s hard to gauge if the plants are happy or not yet but one can only hope things will start looking healthy again.
Check out this one plant, it came from a variety pack of regs, and it flowered as soon as I put it out at the start of June.
And this other plant did the same thing, but then revegged, which was a setback because it spent basically an entire month in that weird reveg limbo.
16 Likes
Someone at the seed bank must have dropped an auto in the pack for a laugh, just to confuse someone lol. Great looking plant though, they look a lot happier now after all the added food.
Yeah I was looking at those and waiting to see when they were available again, luckily I checked my controller and it was faulty not the fan, so mine is back up and running just in time for summer, now I have a new controller.
3 Likes
Dose ‘em up bro! Some LITFA will work! I put that shit on everything!
5 Likes
…right… 
3 Likes
Plants!!
Some new Dark Sparks started for next round:
The FAM tent looking good and filling out. Getting some pretty intense leaf spotting/burning on the GTxSBR but cant panic now just gotta see these through to completion.
Dark Spark tent has been really filling out, lots and lots of thick colas and some really good phenos in here this run. I reckon these should be done in a couple weeks.
Outdoor has seen a huge spurt in vegetative growth. The smaller plants seem to really be struggling with pests and nutrition but the larger plants are starting to thrive I think.
Buds!!
18 Likes
They are all looking great Trev, all our outside plants this last 2 weeks have jumped up in size considerably with all the heat and rain. My cabbages have doubled their size this week and even the cauliflowers are growing faster than the bugs can eat them lol…
You must be self sufficient for weed now with the 2 flower tents running. I stated 4 Dark Sparks on Saturday I think, still waiting for them to get above ground should be any day now.
5 Likes