Dropastones Northern Lights #5 Grow Journal

[bushybush]

i think its pretty retarded rooting in water, then plating in soil?

well to me its not logical, but w/e thats how u do it

congrats

HA! This guy! I have a feeling he's never cloned anything in his damn life. Bubble cloners, ez-cloners etc. are the SHIT. Ok Dropa, now I 've got you and the good Doctor swearing by smartpots/airpots. I tried one of the fabric type ones and it currently has a 30 day flowerer in it. She seems to be the happiest girl I have right now, even though she seems to want more water than the others. Are thepots you guys have re-usable? Do those holes all over do root pruning plus all them to get more oxygen? Intrigued Bushface here awaiting your thoughts! Thanks!

 

[chb444220]

damn man... u can fit 9 under the 400 watter!? wow.. yeaaa i got a 400 watter myself... and was woried about fitting 6 under it.. thats good 2 kno u can manage that many under the 400/600 watter. lookin good man! i got a PE flowering right now.

 

[Dropastone]

yea i think i seen a couple amber in the pic. looking real good tho looking like its going to be some nice smoke.

Thank you my friend I'm going crazy waiting for them to finish.

wowowowowowowowo
what pleasant 420 eye candy Dropa!!!!! really couldnt ask for much more.
hahah, your too funny saying that your dope aint the prettiest.. hahah, THEY ARE FUCKIN HUGE!!!!!!!!!
i will take ugly buds like that any day!!!!!! lol
Trichome shots are amazing!!!!!!! i wonder if you cut a couple buds now and noted the day... and cut others later and then cured them both and then sampled them both.
It would be interesting to hear the different smoke reports on them.. ?
so you had ph lockout? any idea how that happened. Im also very amazed that you grew these in 1 gallon pots!!!!!!!!! could that be the reason?
Very intreging garden you have Dropa. AWesme journal repotring and amazing photography.
peace,
amber

I cut samplers off every 4 to 5 days to see where it's at. With every sample the buzz increases.

About the pH lockout, I'm still kinda new to soil and didn't quite have it all figured out yet. I think I just need to flush em a little more throughout the grow to leech out the salt build up. Also I'm gonna have to find some dolomite lime to help buffer the soil.

Actually the big plant I'm waiting to finish was grow in a 2.4 gallon air pot. The closet with the 9 plants are being grown in .8 gallon pots.

HA! This guy! I have a feeling he's never cloned anything in his damn life. Bubble cloners, ez-cloners etc. are the SHIT. Ok Dropa, now I 've got you and the good Doctor swearing by smartpots/airpots. I tried one of the fabric type ones and it currently has a 30 day flowerer in it. She seems to be the happiest girl I have right now, even though she seems to want more water than the others. Are thepots you guys have re-usable? Do those holes all over do root pruning plus all them to get more oxygen? Intrigued Bushface here awaiting your thoughts! Thanks!

Hey bushy, yes they are reusable pots and yes those are what the holes are for. The root enters the cone shape and goes out the hole, only the air prunes it before it makes it outside the pot. Then that root will produce new shoots within the root ball. Also I would like to think with all the holes it helps to aerate the soil some, not much but some.

Hear is a quick vid that will give you a visual explanation. You can fast forward to around the 50 sec mark if you want.

[youtube]iOf-39YS_GU[/youtube]

damn man... u can fit 9 under the 400 watter!? wow.. yeaaa i got a 400 watter myself... and was woried about fitting 6 under it.. thats good 2 kno u can manage that many under the 400/600 watter. lookin good man! i got a PE flowering right now.

Yeah buddy, I'm going for nine of em this time. It's gonna be a little crowed but I believe it will be manageable.

Thanks everyone for you comments, they are greatly appreciated.

 

[Dr.Amber Trichome]

Hi Dropa,
Im also new to soil.So far i have not had too many issues. I just had some leaf problems but think its under control.
Im wondering how to test or figure out about ph lockout.. I understand this is all new to you, but it seems like you might have a clue.
what do you think the signs are and do you think it might be benifical to add the dolimite lime as a preventative additive so that ph lockout does not occur.
thanks
Amber

 

[Dropastone]

Hey Doc. pH lockout will occur when your soil is too acidic or alkaline. For example if your soil has a pH value of say 5 on the pH scale it will cause a pH lockout. Meaning your plants won't be able to absorb the correct micros and nutrients that your plants need to be happy and healthy.

In my case, I believe I didn't flush enough during it's growth cycle to properly rid the soil of built up salts that are left over from the nutrients I fed them and high amounts of salt in your soil will lower your mediums pH levels

One way you can check your pH levels in your soil is when you flush you can check the runoff with a pH meter. This would not be an accurate reading but it would at least give you a ball park figure of the pH levels in your soil.

In my case it was to late to try and correct the problem. For example I tried flushing with water with a pH of around 7 to 8 to try and bring up the pH in my soil. Then after checking my runoff I had a reading of 5.2. I managed to get it up around 5.6 but that not enough for soil. For soil your Ideal pH is around 6.5 and for hydro it's around 5.8. So you can see that a runoff of 5.6 is a far cry from where it needs to be at 6.5.

Now if you use dolomite lime mixed in with your soil it acts like a buffer and should keep you in the desired pH range through out your grow. I've never used dolomite lime before and I am no expert when it comes to using it. I'm just trying to help you to understand what it does and why you may or may not need it.

Signs of pH lockout can and will vary. It could be yellowing leaves it could be burnt up crispy looking leaves. The symptoms could go on and on. Just make sure you don't over feed and depending on how long you veg for give your plants a good flush before you go 12-12 and a good flush a cpl of times during flowering and you should be alright.

Alright I've went on long enough and I hope you got something out of my ramblings. If you have anymore questions feel free to ask.

Also if somebody else has something to add that I may have missed, by all means let's here it so we can help out the Doc.

Peace.

 

[redrum83420]

do you use a leaching solution in your water when you flush drop? i think i finaly got 1 of my plants out of nute lock. the plant was looking like crap droopy leafs for a while. i flushed the crap out of it yesterday and its looking very happy today, leafs pointing straight out now adjusting my ph meter probably helped allot also.

 

[Dropastone]

Nah, I was just using straight pH-ed water. I flushed that sucker a good 3 times within a 5 week time period and could never get it to go past 5.6. What kind of leaching solution where you using?

 

[redrum83420]

the last of my botanicare clearex, once it's gone i'll be using gh florakleen. i guess they are supposed to brake down the built up salts in the medium fast. i dump enough in soil to saturate it, do that to all then go back and pour more to get some runoff.

 

[Dropastone]

Cool, I'll have to check that out. Might come in handy later on.

 

[Dr.Amber Trichome]

the last of my botanicare clearex, once it's gone i'll be using gh florakleen. i guess they are supposed to brake down the built up salts in the medium fast. i dump enough in soil to saturate it, do that to all then go back and pour more to get some runoff.

Thanks for the information Redrum, im going to keep it handy in case i have this problem.. +reps..

Hey Doc. pH lockout will occur when your soil is too acidic or alkaline. For example if your soil has a pH value of say 5 on the pH scale it will cause a pH lockout. Meaning your plants won't be able to absorb the correct micros and nutrients that your plants need to be happy and healthy.

In my case, I believe I didn't flush enough during it's growth cycle to properly rid the soil of built up salts that are left over from the nutrients I fed them and high amounts of salt in your soil will lower your mediums pH levels

One way you can check your pH levels in your soil is when you flush you can check the runoff with a pH meter. This would not be an accurate reading but it would at least give you a ball park figure of the pH levels in your soil.

In my case it was to late to try and correct the problem. For example I tried flushing with water with a pH of around 7 to 8 to try and bring up the pH in my soil. Then after checking my runoff I had a reading of 5.2. I managed to get it up around 5.6 but that not enough for soil. For soil your Ideal pH is around 6.5 and for hydro it's around 5.8. So you can see that a runoff of 5.6 is a far cry from where it needs to be at 6.5.

Now if you use dolomite lime mixed in with your soil it acts like a buffer and should keep you in the desired pH range through out your grow. I've never used dolomite lime before and I am no expert when it comes to using it. I'm just trying to help you to understand what it does and why you may or may not need it.

Signs of pH lockout can and will vary. It could be yellowing leaves it could be burnt up crispy looking leaves. The symptoms could go on and on. Just make sure you don't over feed and depending on how long you veg for give your plants a good flush before you go 12-12 and a good flush a cpl of times during flowering and you should be alright.

Alright I've went on long enough and I hope you got something out of my ramblings. If you have anymore questions feel free to ask.

Also if somebody else has something to add that I may have missed, by all means let's here it so we can help out the Doc.

Peace.

Dropa, you are such a nice guy! taking your time to type this very valuable information up for me. I had no clue about any of this and now i feel like i have a new powerful tool to help me in times of stress if needed. I am going to be checking my runoff now.. no doubt. what a great idea.. and if the dolimite lime doesnt hurt the grow or bloom of the plants then it seems like if really might be a wonderful additive to use for preventing any problems down the road. I think i will do this in the future along with adding neem as a weekly foliar spray for bug maintenance. My friend and wondeful riu gardener, Rene, uses neem weekly as foliar spray and her leaves look super healthy and shiney.
I hope you had a blazing 420 Dropa! I watched a couple really cool DVD's last night. Im going to post some images of what they are in my journal later.. stop by and take a look.. and check them out.. really really fun stuff. Later Amber

 

[redrum83420]

glad i could help dropastone and dr. amber trichome. i was flushing with just water, but it didnt seem to do a very good job, even using 3 times the amount of water to pot size. having tap water of over 500ppm doesnt help much either. and i used less then a gallon of water on each plant. most of the 1 gallon pots i used 2-3 16oz cups full worth of the water/leach.

 

[Dropastone]

That's great Amber, glad I could help you out. Just remember though, if it aint broke don't fix it.

You know I'll be stopping by, cant' wait to see what you have in store for all your fans.

Doctor doctor tell me the news I got a bad case of loving you.

 

[Dropastone]

There's a few more turning amber on me. I think If I let this go one more week it'll be ready.

 

[redrum83420]

wow 90 days but looking beauuuuuuuuutiful

 

[faderharley]

Yeah bro, you got abit further to go imo....

 

[400aZip]

what a great thread....Now I know what I want my NL to look like! lol but I had no ideaaa it can flower that long. My buddy just chopped his NL after 9-10 weeks and it looks decent but yours looks top notch.... +rep

 

[Dropastone]

wow 90 days but looking beauuuuuuuuutiful

Yeah bro, you got abit further to go imo....

Sadly I'll have to agree.

what a great thread....Now I know what I want my NL to look like! lol but I had no ideaaa it can flower that long. My buddy just chopped his NL after 9-10 weeks and it looks decent but yours looks top notch.... +rep

Thank you and welcome aboard. The NL5 will finish in nine to ten weeks if you get the right pheno. Unfortunately this one here is not one of them. It's more of a sativa dominate pheno and that's why it's taking forever to finish. Also I'm speculating it's taking longer to finish because of the pH lockout I've been experiencing with it. I'm starting to think it's not getting the proper nutrients to finish correctly. My reasoning behind this is because the plant I clipped the clone from finished in 11weeks on my last run with it. So there is another good reason to keep your plants happy a healthy. I started to change my feeding schedule for this final round. During round two I fed every watering with no flush in the end. During round 3 I'm only feeding every other watering and so far so good the plant's are looking great but we'll have to see if that trend continues.

I hope everybody is having a great Easter weekend. I just got back from my mom and dads place a little while ago. We had a huge brunch and now I'm freaking stuffed. Ohhh wait a minute, I think I hear something. Ohhh it's just the couch calling out to me

Peace.

 

[400aZip]

Well my NL are clones from my friends mother. Its his first time growing alone, and its also my first time growing. NL is my second round of harvest, 4 weeks after Sensi Star. My friends NL had crazy deficiencies at the end of flower but we found it it was just root bound like nuts. He was using 250whps for 3 girls, and i think gen. hydro nutes. like i said, harvest was ehh, but it still smells dank. its curing now so I'll have a smoke report in a couple weeks. but Im glad I found this thread. Im sure its a bank of knowledge and once finals are over I'll sit down and read it out. Im 16 days into flower so I have plenty of time, I guess. Happy Easter!

 

[Dropastone]

Welcome to RIU. There is infinite amounts of info to be had here on the boards. If you have any questions I'll be glad and try to answer them for you. If I can't there's a lot very knowledgeable growers here that can.

Thanks for following along.

 

[Dr.Amber Trichome]

HI DROPa!!!!!!! it sounds like you had a wonderful Easter, im happy to hear that.
400aZip is so right, you have a great journal here! Its def one of my favorites. I love this picture of your trichomes.
I cant believe how many there are, its mind blowing!!!!!!
hahaha, i know what you mean about the couch calling you after your big easter meal. I had serious couch lock yestereday. I smoked a super lemon haze and snow white joint with some master kush and white widow hash sprinkeled in it.(hows that for a cocktail mix) I was paralized, which was great because im usually such a hyper person.It was cool to just melt into my purple velvet couch for a while..lol
So tell me Dropa do you have a favorite cocktail mix of herbal delight? lmao.. take it easy Amber