neerGreen #2: Let's try soilless

[cannabineer]

Good day y'all!
I want to thank everybody for the conversations that made my first neerGreen journal so much fun.
It's cold and wet here ... the hottest summer in months has finally broken, and I'm growing again!

Twelve years ago, I grew Cinderella 99, the original from Bros. Grimm. It was a delightful smoke, and I took the time to keep a coupla pruned males alive long enough to take some pollen. An artist's paint brush allowed me to selectively make a couple of seeded branchlets.

This year I tried to sprout the seeds. Ten failed. Then twenty. Then a hundred. I took the remaining ~200 and committed them unto the watery shallow. Four popped at once ... but it was a fakeout. They're all dead Dave. ~sigh~
Here they are, two weeks in water and minutes from becoming compost. cn

 

[cannabineer]

Last season, I grew a pair of Nirvana feminized plants: a Raspberry Cough whom I called Halle, and a White Widow from a shrunken, sketchy-looking bean that grew into (Runter) Alice.
The Raspberry Cough was the prettier plant both to my eyes and my nose. her jars still have an enticing "blackberry jam and gingerbread" sort of smell, while Alice stank of urinal cakes, Pine-Sol and freshly-cut schedule 40. But her smoke is way superior for me ... more Sativa-trippy, while Halle gives me a very nondescript sort of buzz.

So I committed my four Widows to the birthing-bowl. They'd spent the year in my refrigerator, and after my fiasco with dead Cindybabies i was worried. But they all sprouted quite well within two days. Here's the lively quartet still in the maternity ward. Pictures were taken October 14th after a Columbus day "commit".


This time around, I decided to go soilless. The medium is ProMix. I took a six-hole flat from my not-very-successful effort to plant a flowerbed this past hot season. You can see the specialist equipment I used to make holes in the wetted medium and transfer the delicate little newborns to their square of cradles.

Two days later, they broke surface. Pic October 17.

Here they are on October 22nd. So far all they received was tap water coming out at ~60 ppm.

cn

 

[cannabineer]

Okay, a bit more catch-up.
The first image was taken on October 28th. Four happy babies emerge soillessly.


Six days later (Nov 03) they were a little bigger. I found they needed water after the third or fourth day.

Two days later, i made the decision to pot them up in their own containers. I took four pint potsand set them in fresh Pro-Mix, then watered them in using tap water (60ppm). Here they're showing some curl from all that water.

I am finding that Pro-Mix is rather slow to drain. I was enticed to try soilless for several reasons, but one was seeing it work beautifully in the hands of someone else. What i since found out was the medium I'd seen and liked is actually Sunshine Mix #4 "Advanced" (not their normal formula). Regular Sunshine and Pro-mix are both peat-based and lack the airy fast-draining structure of the Advanced, which is due to the admixture of much coco coir.

At this stage, I have them in a closet that stays closed at night.
They're on a 24-hour continuous cycle (with breaks for some actual sun on my windowsill) under a four-tube T5 fixture. The bulbs are 2x KorallenZucht "Fiji Purple" and two actinic bulbs whose spec I'm not dragging up through the descending clouds of diterpenes. Ninety-six watts of PAR-optimized light are doing a good job keeping them alive and growing, if not as fast as under an MH. But no need to cool and the privacy of a closed closet ... is worth a somewhat longer veg.

Under this light, it's easy to spot the beginnings of the crisis that was about to strike ... Mystery Leaf Death. Dun-duhn -DUUUUUHNN!!!
cn

 

[cannabineer]

One of my objectives in choosing soilless is to grant my passion for salt ferts an outlet. The hydroponic Cindy i grew in '00 was entirely nourished by nutrient I mixed from lab-shelf components. I spent some time reading on blending hydroponic nutrients, and learned that plants like their nitrogen in the form of nitrate. So i committed to developing an ammonium-free formula. I came to the conclusion that five basic feedstocks were necessary and sufficient:
potassium nitrate
calcium nitrate
magnesium sulfate
calcium sulfate
monopotassium phosphate

I also needed micros and spent some time and money assembling the necessary salts, most of them as nitrates. I devised and formulated micro stock solutions that are 1:10000, which means for ten liters of finished nutrient, 1 ml each of micros (two solutions: acidic and alkaline) would provide correct levels of the minority ions.

The acidic micros yield (in parts per billion):
Fe 2500 from nitrate
Mn 750 from sulfate
Zn 50 from nitrate
Cu 10 from nitrate
Co 20 from nitrate
Ni 10 from sulfate
Cr 10 from sulfate

The alkalines provide
Si 20 ppm from potassium silicate
B 200ppb from sodium tetraborate
Mo 0.2 ppb from potassium molybdate

The major nutrients (N, P, K, Mg, Ca, S) were derived from the above salts, but I'm using "practical-grade" from the feed store and no more reagent grade. That's fine with me, because the reagent run was a proof of concept: growing great weed in an entirely nonorganic manner. it succeeded brilliantly; that Cindy was delicious and well-received by dispensary folk I knew back in the day. My calcium nitrate is the commercial "double salt" with ammonium: five calcium, one ammonium, eleven nitrate, and ten waters of hydration yield prills that are stable in air. Pure calcuim nitrate tetrahydrate is hygroscopic and deliquescent ... it "melts" and runs.
My calcium sulfate is "solution-grade" gypsum and is only 97% by label, but fortunately it's a fine powder that dissolves very satisfactorily. It's the insoluble one of the bunch and goes in first ...

So I sat down with a calculator and a list of molecular weights and element proportions, and devised a blend that delivers
N 200ppm
P 75ppm
K 250ppm
Ca 200ppm
Mg 60ppm
S (the makeup ion) came out to 112ppm.

I weighed and added the salts to 100 liters of RO water. I added 10 ml of each micro stock (with much stirring ... a temporary cloud of smoke-fine precipitate would form). The finished soln measured 4.94 in pH and 1650 ppm on my Nutra Dip. I used potassium hydroxide to adjust the pH up to 5.50.
I began with a 1:7 dilution of this stock in 10ppm RO water. It measured 270 ppm.
~more later~ cn

 

[cannabineer]

So, Tactical Nute™ in hand, I decided to begin feeding. Remembering how the youngsters hated what I'd fed them last year, I started slow with the 270ppm broth. Plant #2 developed these weird crinkly stunted leaves, so I backed off.
However all but the crinkly plant began to show yellowing of the lower leaves, and it progressed to the ppoint where the first and second sets became blotchy and partially necrotic. I flushed the "starter nute" out of plants 1 to 3 and watered numbers 1 and 2 with 500ppm feed. Number 3 got an RO-water flush, while #4 left the "starter nutes" in the medium.
The ailment got worse with the two unfed plants, and especially #3, the flushed but not-fed one. I promptly fed the last two with 600 ppm, and within two days the upper portions of the plants greened up, and the leaf death stopped. I've got them supping 780 ppm now, but will dial back to 600 ppm.
Plant #2 still has that strange wrinkly stunting, while plants #3 and 4 are in pretty fine health. I wonder what gives with Wrinkly.

Here are plants 1 and 2 enjoying a spot of winter sunshine.


Here are plants 3 and 4.

Here are the yellowed bits on number 3.

And on #4.

Finally a close-up of the malformed one. I think I'll back off on her nutes entirely and see if it makes a diff. It could be an oddly-sensitive pheno. Frankly I'm stumped ... but as long as she lives, I'll keep her going. cn

 

[cannabineer]

Here are some pics I took yesterday under the T5s.
This is #2, the Gimp. I don't get why she's got those stunted leaves. Has anyone seen something like this?

Here are plants #3 and 4. Under this light, the damaged leaves show plainly. Nonetheless their health has improved a lot since I upped the feed strength. They're starting their seventh set.

Plant #1 has recovered nicely as well.

So today I fed again. I am feeding/watering more often than I really need to by pot weight. However I want to present the plants with fresh nutrient in case they're feeding differentially and risking lockout.
I used my premixed 780ppm nute. Diluting from 1650 to 780 raised the pH to about 5.8. A drop of ~29% phosphoric brought me down to 5.58; perfect.
When I ran the 780 in the top of each pot, I got an initial drainage at 900 to 920 ppm. That's my signal that I'm feeding them a bit too strong a solution at the moment. I ran a full pot volume of feed through each one, bringing drain ppm down to about 820.

I just whipped up five liters of 600ppm feed, and it required 1 1/2 drops of phosphoric to correct the pH to 5.54. I should be able to go a coupla weeks on that, just in time to reassess the plants' needs and capacities.
cn

 

[cannabineer]

It looks like adding more nutrient was a winning solution!
Here they are today (Tuesday).
They are definitely growing: after three days their pots were very light. Their root systems must be coming along nicely. I see many root tips poking around the pots' drain holes. I might have to pot up soon!
I fed them with the nutrient I mixed the last time, 600-610 ppm. They each got about 300 ml, enough for some runoff from each one. The light brown "tea" pigmentation (tannins, I'm guessing) is disappearing from the runoff.

Here are plants 1 and 2 (the Gimp). Plant 1:600 ppm in; first runoff came out at 810 ppm dropping to 720 at the end.
The Gimp had similar numbers, and she got a little extra nute in order to flush out all of the slightly rich residue.

Here are plants 3 and 4. they're healthy, and even the affected lower leaves are greening up a little bit on the portions that survived. For the moment, i'm calling my nute regimen "dialed in".
Plant 4's initial runoff was 1010 ppm. Note absence of any signs of overfert, like claw or tip burn. And they've added perceptible size and span since my last installation here.

Here's a pic of the Gimp from below. You can see that the lesions, whatever they are, are transparent. This plant is not improving, but it is still growing, and the leaves are still filling out about halfway. I do not know what the problem is, but it's either congenital or viral. unless her health goes disastrously south, i'll keep growing her.

Here's #1. She's showing faint but definite signs of whatever is making the Gimp ... Gimpy. It is not magnesium deficiency, oh lol.

Here's the quartet, Numbers 4 to 1 left to right, luxuriating in winter sunshine from the window. It lets me give the T5s a bit of a break. I've added a unit dose of current nutrient as a scale object; the Erlenmeyer is a 300-ml that's been with me for most of my life.


cn

 

[curious2garden]

Cn,
My Aurora Indica, also from Nirvana, had some odd whitish/yellow marbling to the leaves. I also got some odd growth on AI #1. Today in AI #1's fourth generation clones are also showing this same tendency. So, for me, whatever it is seems to be genetic not nutrient based because AI #1 has flourished and produced well even with that odd marbling and some deformed leaves.

Anyway that's my experience. I'd say over all your plants look great. I'm surprised about the high nutrient at this level though especially with Nirvana genetics. My AI's are low PPM feeders. I'm in week 7 of flower and only at 600-700 PPM.
Good to see your new journal,
Annie
PS I almost forgot to mention that my new Bubba's smell like cat urine, talk about disappointment.
PPS Go have dinner already!

 

[cannabineer]

Here are the plants today. I watered (fed) them, as their pots were feather-light this morning. They supped a potful of nutrient in just two days ... numbers 3 and 4, the Big Twins especially.
Here's #1, the one showing traces of the Gimpiness besetting her closetmate.
Last time I watered with 790ppm, and whipped up a big batch of pH-corrected 600ppm.
I gave 300 ml of this gentle nectar to #1. Initial runoff was 760 ppm, suggesting that I "nailed" the ratio of nutrient to water for this phase of growth.

Here is #2, the Gimp. Her pot was the heaviest, suggesting that she's not feeding as vigorously as the three other little piggies. Nonetheless her runoff was also 760 ppm ... which means that she's doing the same thing as her prettier sisters. I'm convinced the Gimpiness is phenotypical and neither disease nor maltreatment.

Numbers 3 and 4 are the large and glossily healthy ones. Their initial runoff was 720 and 730 ppm respectively. I gave each 300 ml, of which about 100 ran off.

Here's a close-up of the leaves that were hardest-hit by that initial bout of undernutrition. The necrosis stopped, and what's left is slowly greening.
To me this means that my formula is reasonably close to ideal.

Here is the quartet after a blessed event. I took my favorite micro-trimming scissors and performed a bris. They're topped, and behold their vegetal foreskins. I might be mixing sexual metaphors, but ~shrug~.

I just did a count, and nos. 1 through 3 have seven pairs of true leaves, while #4, my biggest girl, has eight. I hope to train them to the same approximate shape as Alice, whom I grew last season and was the other seed in this packet of five femmes.

I'm simply delighted with how healthy they are. I am also grooving on soilless ... the convenience of pots and portability; the efficiency and fine nute control of hydro. cn

 

[OGEvilgenius]

I'll be watching. Just want to suggest you ditch the Pro Mix and go with Coco if you want to go soilless. You would probably want to up the Mg content in your feedings, otherwise you should be good to go with Coco. Pro mix is

a) non renewable
b) has terrible moisture retention (retains too much, must add much perlite to mix) and hydrophobic properties
c) and I have no idea why anyone uses it at all, other than it's pretty cheap.

 

[OGEvilgenius]

I notice you liked the advanced mix... it's the coco that makes it good. The peat moss is pointless/stupid.

 

[cannabineer]

I'll be watching. Just want to suggest you ditch the Pro Mix and go with Coco if you want to go soilless. You would probably want to up the Mg content in your feedings, otherwise you should be good to go with Coco. Pro mix is

a) non renewable
b) has terrible moisture retention (retains too much, must add much perlite to mix) and hydrophobic properties
c) and I have no idea why anyone uses it at all, other than it's pretty cheap.

Ohhh don't I know it! I fell in like with soilless when I saw it in another grow. I failed to remember that what I liked was Sunshine #4 Advanced, which is coco-based. I was rather bummed by the heavier texture of the peat-based ProMix, which is apparently almost identical to regular Sunshine #4. But I paid my $40 plus tax for a big-ass bale of the ProMix and will use it for at least this grow.

 

[OGEvilgenius]

Also the leaf is likely genetic (I've seen a lot of cannabis plants with this trait, seems like blueberry has this as a pretty common recessive) and I think it'll grow out of it.

 

[OGEvilgenius]

Ohhh don't I know it! I fell in like with soilless when I saw it in another grow. I failed to remember that what I liked was Sunshine #4 Advanced, which is coco-based. I was rather bummed by the heavier texture of the peat-based ProMix, which is apparently almost identical to regular Sunshine #4. But I paid my $40 plus tax for a big-ass bale of the ProMix and will use it for at least this grow.

Yeah, live and learn as they say. You can do ok with regular Sunshine #4 but it's a PITA to water properly and it seems to never dry out. Perlite is cheap and you can use it in the future, I'd just mix it in heavily and you should be good.

 

[cannabineer]

Yeah, live and learn as they say. You can do ok with regular Sunshine #4 but it's a PITA to water properly and it seems to never dry out. Perlite is cheap and you can use it in the future, I'd just mix it in heavily and you should be good.

I think I'll do that. Someone else I trust is giving me the same advice.

I will say though that the plants are doing a bang-up job of slurping the ProMix dry. My pots (all but the Gimp's; she's speshul) were light as a feather today.

I watered with my 590-600ppm mix. I found that adding 200 ml per plant produced about 25-50 ml of runoff. Initial runoff ppm (plants 1 to 4) were 810, 830, 790 and 830 ppm. So at this time, ~800-ppm feed is a bit too strong. I'll water with the 600ppm mix (two liters left, so two more waterings) and then decide between 600 and 800 ppm in my next batch.

And soon it'll be time to pot up again! Oh, and they're *definitely* smelling rather skunky! I am knocking it back with pulses from my ozonator, but will soon have to set the tent and charcoal canister back up again.

They're doing nicely, considering I scalped'em. Time for them to bush out a bit. cn

 

[SirGreenThumb]

Just noticed your sig and decided to click on it.
I am in the process of finishing my setup for my new grow tent and will also be growing again. "It has been a while" I am going to grow a one plant scrog, and I was going to grow pineapple express, but my fiancee told me that I should grow the white rhino. So yea, I'm going with the white rhino.

How do you go about sprouting your seeds? Like where do you place them for them to sprout?
Reason I am asking is because I have never had an issue with sprouting any of my seedlings. I will usually take a dark cup fill it half way and set it in a place that gets a lot of circulation and is a really dark area, like the closet that contains my water heater.

I will also be using a bubbler system in a 16gal container. I never use nutes, but always have a great grow. Guess we will see.

Oh, Subbd.

 

[cannabineer]

Just noticed your sig and decided to click on it.
I am in the process of finishing my setup for my new grow tent and will also be growing again. "It has been a while" I am going to grow a one plant scrog, and I was going to grow pineapple express, but my fiancee told me that I should grow the white rhino. So yea, I'm going with the white rhino.

How do you go about sprouting your seeds? Like where do you place them for them to sprout?
Reason I am asking is because I have never had an issue with sprouting any of my seedlings. I will usually take a dark cup fill it half way and set it in a place that gets a lot of circulation and is a really dark area, like the closet that contains my water heater.

I will also be using a bubbler system in a 16gal container. I never use nutes, but always have a great grow. Guess we will see.

Oh, Subbd.

Good morning SGT!
My germination method is a small glass of water in a dark cupboard. I germed these while ambient temps were still 70s-80s. Last year I placed the cup on a piece of warm electronics and inverted an opaque container over it to keep it dark.
I scaled that up with the Cindys and changed the water daily to wash away the bacterial cloudiness.

For hydro, I love Oasis cubes and have germed directly into them. What i did last year was germed the seeds "open" to verify their viability, then transferred them to Oasis (with a pinch of sand) while they were still curled up. The Oasis cubes went into Hydroton in net pots.

Waiiiiiitasecond. Sixteen-gallon bubbler with no nutes? It takes a brave man to pull the leg of a polar bear. Leave your avi as a decoy however, and I predict a clean getaway cn

 

[SirGreenThumb]

Good morning SGT!
My germination method is a small glass of water in a dark cupboard. I germed these while ambient temps were still 70s-80s. Last year I placed the cup on a piece of warm electronics and inverted an opaque container over it to keep it dark.
I scaled that up with the Cindys and changed the water daily to wash away the bacterial cloudiness.

For hydro, I love Oasis cubes and have germed directly into them. What i did last year was germed the seeds "open" to verify their viability, then transferred them to Oasis (with a pinch of sand) while they were still curled up. The Oasis cubes went into Hydroton in net pots.

Waiiiiiitasecond. Sixteen-gallon bubbler with no nutes? It takes a brave man to pull the leg of a polar bear. Leave your avi as a decoy however, and I predict a clean getaway cn

My White Rhino seed has just broken open and is almost about to expose its full tap root. I also have 5 middy seeds that are sitting in a separate cup. Three of them have broken their shell and are getting ready to expose their tap roots. I don't know of the strain that they may be, but I feel like I can make them turn out pretty nicely. I will be lollipopping them in solo cups. I am also thinking of keeping a male and stealing some pollen sacks so I can breed my White Rhino. Only one bud though, I hate seeds.

But yea, I've yet to use a container this larger before and am anxious to see how everything turns out. I feel pretty confident that my grow will do very well. I am aiming for 10oz from my White Rhino. We shall see how close I get.

Edit: My seeds have been germinating for 2 days.

 

[cannabineer]

It's been a spell since I posted an update. I threw my back out in a big way on Monday, and am seriously misbehaving now as i sit in front of the monitor.
Look everybody - I got a new toy!! It's a Stray Light 300-watt plasma lamp! I hope to put it to work as soon as practical, since the fecund foursome is just chugging along. However it came with no mounting hardware, and now i have to rig a safe way to hang it in the tent. I'll also rig the filter and fan (girls are getting odorous! House smelled vaguely skunky when i got back from stuffing my face and straining my liver at a friend's family Thanksgiving feast) to draw the heat out of the tent's top; so far I've been knocking the odor back a coupla times a day by running the central heating on "fan only" and my ozone generator at the same time. Forgives ... digestive irregularities, as well. But the deviled eggs were soooo goooood!

I'd previously ordered a plasma light from Gavita (same Luxim light "engine")... i found one for under a grand. But when I placed the order, i got my money refunded, as the lights had been placed on nationwide "hold sale". I haven't contacted Gavita because I only saw a phone contact, and I speak no Dutch. So i selected the Stray Light for a coupla hundred more.

I wanted to use a strong magnet to attach the light's mounting bracket to a bit of steel strap. But the bracket and the entire unit are non-magnetic!
I haven't even lit it off yet. the sparse literature contains one dire warning: do NOT rotate the capsule out of horizontal!
But I'm excited to try this true "indoor sun".
So sometime today I will have to overcome my cold, backache and residual hangover ... and procure me a suitable set of mounting hardware. Not sure quite how or what yet. A stainless 1/2" bolt is gonna be part of it though.

Here are las chicas yesterday. I have noticed that the runoff ppm have been a bit high ... 800 ppm going even as high as 1040 ppm initial on the big healthy ones. The first three pics are yesterday's, and the remaining was taken just minutes ago as they bask in winter sun.
The Gimp continues to do her weird mutant thing.

A backlit side shot shows that they're bushing out after I topped 'em.

So yesterday I used up my premixed 600ppm feed, and noticed both yesterday and today (they're drinking like fiends! I wanna get the tent and new light set up so i can put them in bigger pots!) that the runoff remains a bit strong. So I mixed the coming week's batch to 570ppm and pH 5.54. I did pH a sample of runoff at pH 5.6x, so I'm confident pH is "dialed" even if nute strength still seems a tiny bit high.
I also pulled a dumb stunt. I had to dash yesterday to get to my dinner, and came home a bit unsteady ... which i promptly improved by drinking deep of the Widow's wisps. I left #4 in the pitch-dark all night and in a gloomy room until almost noon. Duh. But this early in veg, I don't expect any bad consequences, and #4 is the biggest anyway. Might even the canopy, ~grin~.
Here they are today.


cn

 

[SirGreenThumb]

Looking good, nice thick stalk. Any plans to train them or anything? Or you just going to let them grow straight up?