1st time journal: 6 plants, rdwc, 1000w, lemon skunk

Hey sorry if I missed somewhere in here how much cam is you exaughst fan pulling and do you use a intake fan at all?

doubletake said:

Hey sorry if I missed somewhere in here how much cam is you exaughst fan pulling and do you use a intake fan at all?

Click to expand...

Heya, the flower side is a sealed room with a mini split AC unit and a decent size portable dehumidifier ($250). No intake or exhaust for that side.

The veg side has a 6" exhaust fan that is about 400 CFM but I haven't used it much at all. I haven't gotten around to installing the intake fan in the veg room yet because temperatures aren't a problem yet either. Going to put in a small 4" inline fan (unsure on cfm of this one, bought it used) and undecided if I need a carbon can for the veg side exhaust yet. I leave the veg room door cracked open and it keeps the temp around 80 degrees.

About to leave them alone for 4 days, filled the main res as high as it could go (maybe 12 gallons in there), attached a second 15 gallon igloo ice chest to it filled with RO water/calmag/aquashield.

Set AC to 75, dehumidifier on and expelling water to 25 gallon sterlite tote. Flower door sealed, veg door cracked open. Running a 4" can fan connected to small "carbon canfan 33" about 24" size for smell, acting as a scrubber, door to veg side cracked open for slight ventilation.

PPM 900ish, ph adjusted to 5.6ish.

Hope this goes well, scared to leave them alone for so long, it feels like it's starting to be a jungle in there (quoting spittn4cash Fingers crossed. See ya next week.

Clones:


Vegging clones:



Overview:


Misc closeups (scraggy sativa-ish plants are skunks - really taking off now more than bagseeds):

You should be fine, and when you return you will be amazed by the growth!

Went out of town for 5 days, and they seemed to do just fine without me. They drank a ton of water, I'd guess around 15 gallons. PPM rose to 1100 - 1200, ph stable at 5.8. Not sure how to control these skunks that are stretching like crazy, hope they slow down soon.



Skunk flower:


Bagseeds' flowers:



Aerocloner:


Vegging clones:

Awesome B! Glad to hear everything went great while you were gone. Odds were good as you have everything dialed in pretty good. They should stop stretching in about another 10 - 14 days. Hopefully!

BleedsGreen said:

Awesome B! Glad to hear everything went great while you were gone. Odds were good as you have everything dialed in pretty good. They should stop stretching in about another 10 - 14 days. Hopefully!

Click to expand...

Thanks

I am getting very worried about the stretching. If it keeps up at this pace, in 10 -14 days they will be touching the glass on the light hood. The light is raised to just about the maximum height now.

Thinking I might need to tie down some of the tallest colas to get them to grow horizontally a little bit. It feels like the room is getting out of control and I hate it. Next round I will be training them much more aggressively.

Start tieing them down right away, do it right as lights come on as the stems are more flexible then, you can pull them a little tighter, stronger bend in the stem each day.

Hey, Looking great, have really good color, showing no def. However I'm suprised considering your little root growth. Even with plants that small I'd expect a bigger ball of roots. Are you using a rooting supplement? Idk, Mine have just always been larger, but hey it looks like everything is growing great so it could just be me. Don't fix what's not broken. I'm surprised to see green under the top. Are you not using netpots when vegging or what's up with that?

And conserning your stretching problem, I would suggest pulling the tops down back under the screen and extend them to another hole farther away from the base of the stem and pull the tops back up through that hole, get what I'm saying? In other words pull the middle ones down and pull them back up through the net more outwards and vise-versa crossing branches from each plant. May not be the best if you have a plan as far as lifting the screen to get to the buckets but to me thats near impossible once they are bigger. The middle branches look like they have reached a ways so it may be hard to pull them back down so idk. Whatever you do, good luck.

m420p said:

Hey, Looking great, have really good color, showing no def. However I'm suprised considering your little root growth. Even with plants that small I'd expect a bigger ball of roots. Are you using a rooting supplement? Idk, Mine have just always been larger, but hey it looks like everything is growing great so it could just be me. Don't fix what's not broken. I'm surprised to see green under the top. Are you not using netpots when vegging or what's up with that?

And conserning your stretching problem, I would suggest pulling the tops down back under the screen and extend them to another hole farther away from the base of the stem and pull the tops back up through that hole, get what I'm saying? In other words pull the middle ones down and pull them back up through the net more outwards and vise-versa crossing branches from each plant. May not be the best if you have a plan as far as lifting the screen to get to the buckets but to me thats near impossible once they are bigger. The middle branches look like they have reached a ways so it may be hard to pull them back down so idk. Whatever you do, good luck.

Click to expand...

Thanks m420p, I wonder if you are referring to the root pic I took of the 10 or so clones in the 5 gallon bucket (aerocloner)? Those were taken over the course of the last 1-2 weeks, and most of them will be thrown away, I just wanted to see how easy it was to get clones going using the aero sprayer method in a bucket.

I will be tying things down and doing some weaving today when they wake up, doing exactly what you and bleedsgreen are suggesting. I will not be removing this screen for the rest of the cylce (5 more weeks I guess), I "get it" now with the screen and raising it isn't going to happen. The problem is 6 plants is too much for this space I think. The screen I made has a flower site in just about every square and pulling the stretchy skunks under and to the outer section of the screen will cut off many other squares in the screen that have flowers already poking through (hope that makes sense).

Concerns me I won't be able to get the shop vac into the bottom of each bucket for a thorough cleaning at res change (every 2 weeks now, screw doing it weekly). That last 2" of leftover nutes in the buckets is kind of annoying, but not much I can do for it (maybe flush it with some Clearex?).

Thanks for stopping in and taking the time to suggest solutions.

booort said:

Thanks m420p, I wonder if you are referring to the root pic I took of the 10 or so clones in the 5 gallon bucket (aerocloner)? Those were taken over the course of the last 1-2 weeks, and most of them will be thrown away, I just wanted to see how easy it was to get clones going using the aero sprayer method in a bucket.

I will be tying things down and doing some weaving today when they wake up, doing exactly what you and bleedsgreen are suggesting. I will not be removing this screen for the rest of the cylce (5 more weeks I guess), I "get it" now with the screen and raising it isn't going to happen. The problem is 6 plants is too much for this space I think. The screen I made has a flower site in just about every square and pulling the stretchy skunks under and to the outer section of the screen will cut off many other squares in the screen that have flowers already poking through (hope that makes sense).

Concerns me I won't be able to get the shop vac into the bottom of each bucket for a thorough cleaning at res change (every 2 weeks now, screw doing it weekly). That last 2" of leftover nutes in the buckets is kind of annoying, but not much I can do for it (maybe flush it with some Clearex?).

Thanks for stopping in and taking the time to suggest solutions.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, ic, I should have known better just by looking over your system again or reading a little more. Ignore that part of my post then. Except where I said the plants look great. About the res. change, with the way your room is set-up I could see how it would be annoying. If it makes you feel any better I haven't changed my res. all of bloom and haven't seen any effects until about 6-7 weeks in. It's hard for me to completely change my res. because I pay for water and it would cost me extra for water to flush and refill with. I don't pay for some of the water as long as I get it gradually but if I get that much at one time I have to pay up. I'm going to change the res. this week as one of my plants has been turning yellow on me from salt build up or a def. Probably should have changed at 4 and 8 weeks like I planned.

m420p said:

Ahhh, ic, I should have known better just by looking over your system again or reading a little more. Ignore that part of my post then. Except where I said the plants look great. About the res. change, with the way your room is set-up I could see how it would be annoying. If it makes you feel any better I haven't changed my res. all of bloom and haven't seen any effects until about 6-7 weeks in. It's hard for me to completely change my res. because I pay for water and it would cost me extra for water to flush and refill with. I don't pay for some of the water as long as I get it gradually but if I get that much at one time I have to pay up. I'm going to change the res. this week as one of my plants has been turning yellow on me from salt build up or a def. Probably should have changed at 4 and 8 weeks like I planned.

Click to expand...

Just curious, is there a reason why you don't have a little water purifier thing? I bought one called a "small boy" for about $100 from the hydro shop and it's been extremely convenient. I hated filling 5 gallon water jugs at Walmart, and felt very conspicuous loading up 25 gallons of water jugs every few days. It wasn't so much the cost of $1.85 per 5 gallons of purified water as it was a neighbor seeing me unload all this water and them thinking "what the hell is he doing with that much water every week?".

Also, the dehumidifier pulls about 2 gallons of water a day out of the flower room that I use as well. I couldn't have made it this far without the dehumidifier in this sealed room, it's pretty amazing to me when I empty the dehumidifier's reservoir and see how much water was pulled out of the air each day. My humidity with the dehumidifier running 24/7 is about 40-50% at all times. I'd guess humidity issues are non-existent when the room isn't sealed like mine (no intake/exhaust).

booort said:

Just curious, is there a reason why you don't have a little water purifier thing? I bought one called a "small boy" for about $100 from the hydro shop and it's been extremely convenient. I hated filling 5 gallon water jugs at Walmart, and felt very conspicuous loading up 25 gallons of water jugs every few days. It wasn't so much the cost of $1.85 per 5 gallons of purified water as it was a neighbor seeing me unload all this water and them thinking "what the hell is he doing with that much water every week?".

Also, the dehumidifier pulls about 2 gallons of water a day out of the flower room that I use as well. I couldn't have made it this far without the dehumidifier in this sealed room, it's pretty amazing to me when I empty the dehumidifier's reservoir and see how much water was pulled out of the air each day. My humidity with the dehumidifier running 24/7 is about 40-50% at all times. I'd guess humidity issues are non-existent when the room isn't sealed like mine (no intake/exhaust).

Click to expand...

Lol, I get the feeling about the neighbor watching you haul tons of water into the house. The main reason I don't run a RO system or anything like a big blue filter or small boy like your talking about is because my water is so bad it wouldn't be worth what I end up paying for water. The ppm of my water is over 600-700 ppm unfiltered and heavy in Iron and Ca. With it that high I would need a RO filter system with a iron filter before the RO system so it didn't ruin the membrane the first week in the RO filter. But the Iron filters are 90+ dollars a piece and they need to be changed periodically plus the RO filters needing to be changed frequently especially with the water I have they would be going bad quick. So I did the math and even though I pay quite a bit more than you did for water because I get distilled and don't live close to a wal-mart, it wouldn't really be worth it to get a system like that.

Gotcha mp420, didn't know water from the tap could be that high of a ppm, guess I'm lucky my tap water is about 100-150ppm.

I can't seem to get a definitive answer on this from searching here, any suggestions what to with all the growth that is below the screen? There are some flowers and a lot of fan leaves under the screen, some of the flowers under there that don't get much light are showing amber colored hairs. I was kind of operating under the philosophy of letting the plants do their thing, and not cutting off large healthy fan leaves and branches under the canopy, but wondering if the plant is needlessly spending energy developing growth under the screen that gets little light.

Cut this stuff off or just leave it alone?


I used this:


And attached it around the stems of the "stretchers" to strings from the screen. Might be difficult to see, but was able to bend quite a few of the tallest tops towards the outside and create more space in the center.


The stems were very pliable (thanks for the tip of bending things when they wake up bleedsgreen). Will probably have to do this every couple days I would imagine. Seems to be OK for the time being, I have at least 12" from the tops to the glass hood now. No more going out of town anymore for me.

End result:

100 to 150 ppm out of the tap is awesome and you can use that water in your system without going to walmart, or using the RO. I have the RO system as well but I also have 100 ppm tap, actually well water, and I have been experimenting, well my tap water is more stable then the RO water as far as PH balance (less fluctuation) and I have seen zero ill effects. Currently I am running 2 res with the RO water as I was afraid to change mid stream but my cloner, veg and one more flower res have been straight tap water and are having exactly the same results as the RO water except the RO mix needs more PH up or down through out the cycle (the tap water is more stable in PH). SO everything in my grow is going to tap water, no more making RO until I see an issue which I do not expect from my experiments.

As for the under foliage leaves, there is lots of debate here but I have better success when I take about 25% away. This is my personal experience and I don't want to argue with any of the asshole riu bullies. This is just my opinion and if this wasn't for you brooort, I probably wouldn't have replied to that question because of how touchy this subject matter seems to be here. So take it for what it is worth, but you have seen my journal and that is how I like to do it.

Keep up the great work!

Looking good..I see they're reaching through the SCROG. Nice.

Personally, I would remove the lower growth, but I would have removed it during veg...

Since you're so far into flowering, I don't think it would do any good to remove that lower growth now. If I were in your shoes, I would only remove the large fan leaves that are blocking light and air flow, and leave the lower popcorn buds on there to finish. They can serve as a 'sample smoke' before the rest of the bud is ready, or you can add them to your hash/trimmings pile.

Thanks, I'm pretty proud of them and have nobody to show them to besides my wife who couldn't care less.

Bleedsgreen, we get a lot of chloramine in the tap water here, just about every hydroshop guy I've talked to says it can be very bad and purifiers or RO is needed. Chloramine cannot be bubbled away like chlorine can (is my understanding). Was also told the ppm fluctuates here for tap water, but I have yet to see it over 150.

Spittn4cash, I'm gonna go back and look through whatever old journal posts w/pics that you have to see your method for removing the lower growth during veg. I'd like this next batch of clones I took to be a little "neater", my only complaint is the "jungle" feel I get from the room. Would like to be a little more aggressive with topping/training and manicuring them.

Best pic I could get after cleaning up some of the undergrowth



The 10 or so clones I took all had pretty good roots, most of them over 1 foot in length. I messed around and kept throwing cuttings in there and experimenting with it but was pretty shocked at how easy it was overall. For some reason, I thought cloning would be more difficult, but the cheap sloppy aerocloner did a fantastic job. Was kind of sad throwing away all the extra rooted clones.

2 lemon skunk clones and 4 bagseed clones. Bought larger netpots for the 3 I transplanted today, not sure what difference it makes.


Thinking about getting rid of 2 of them and sprouting 2 of the "Shoreline" skunk seeds purchased from seaofseeds, but I think they would all be at different stages of growth and would be too far behind the other clones I just put in netpots. Since all 6 buckets in the flower room are connected now, I can't really do a "perpetual grow" like I initially intended. Wished I could be moving netpots from veg side to flower side every few weeks, but since the nutes have to be the same for everything in flowering this isn't possible without rebuilding.

Drained flower side and refilled with nutes yesterday, used superstoner's botanicare recipe for middle flowering. The ppm of the nutes I drained was 1200-1300, I had been topping off with just calmag/aquashield in RO water, about 5 gallons every other day. The ppm of the new nutes was only 700-800 when following superstoner's botanicare recipe. I have seen no signs of any nute burn even when the ppm was 1200 at the res change. I'll watch the ppm closely over the next few days, but thinking I can push the ppm higher. Already feeding 10ml/gallon of the pro bloom, when I top off in a day or so I guess I'll push it higher. Hope the stretch stops soon. The glass light hood is cool to the touch, so I'd imagine they can get even closer to the light without any burn. Glad I bought the 8" fan and light hood, surprised how cool to the touch the light hood is.



The plants in the front of the room (bagseeds), that get the most air pushed across them seem to have quite a few amber hairs on the flowers. The other 4 plants have no amber hairs at all. Not sure why this is the case, I can only guess that it has something to do with too much of a breeze is hitting the plants in the front. Wondering if there is such a thing as "wind burn" on the flowers from the fan hitting them too hard. I will try to get a good pic if I can get down there before or after lights come on.



Clones seem to be doing very well, no deficiencies noticed what so ever, roots developing nicely and they seem to be "praying to the light". I am a little concerned that the water temperature is pretty damn high in the veg side, the water chiller is only connected to the flower side. 78-79 degree water temp in the veg side, ambient temp stays around 82 - 84 degrees and 25% humidity. Connected a 4" inline fan for an intake that runs 24/7, and set the 6" exhaust to come on for 15 minutes every hour. They look healthy for now, just have to make it about another 4 weeks in the veg side before they move over the the flower side where the water temperature is at 66 degrees and the AC unit keeps air temp about 75 and humidity at 50. Hope they can make it another month with those high water temps without getting any root rot. Using aquashield with every top off in veg side.

Almost 4 weeks into flowering, dna genetics lemon skunks:



This plant (bagseed) was getting a lot of air pushed across it from the oscillating fan and it's in the front with the least light, it's flowers aren't looking so good in places with some red/brown burnt tips. I'd guess it's some sort of wind burn. Some of the flowers on the same plant look healthy and all white, but those are lower on the plant and getting overtaken by the skunk stretcher next to it. It's also happening on some of the flowers to the plant next to it, but none of the other 4 in the rear of the room. Turned off the oscillating option of the fan, pointed it away from the plants some so the fan blows more towards the wall. Tried to position it so I could see most leaves throughout the room gently shaking.

Debating killing off this one's clone and the another bagseed's clone from the plant next to it to make room for new seeds. I guess it still could turn out to be spectacular smoke and worth keeping a clone of, but with limited space and a stash of seeds, I'm thinking the best use of time and effort is probably good genetics that I know where it came from.


Training them a little harder this time:

That group shot is sick, the growth is exploding already! Did you remove your SCROG, or is it buried in there somewhere? And what did you end up doing about the growth under the screen?

Very nice so far, can't wait to see how they finish over the next 4 weeks!

-Cash