Dave's 3rd Grow: Pineapple Chunk in DWC w/fogger

Sick today

I'm sick with a urinary tract infection today, so might put off changing the water until tomorrow. Feel too yuckie to do anything hard.

Bad news first...

Got nute burn on some of the lower leaves. Last time I changed the water, I originally followed AN's instructions which resulted in a horrendous ppm of about 1100. After I found out that was way too high, I tried to dilute it by replacing some of the nutrient-enriched water with pure water. But only got the ppm down to 666, which I hoped would be low enough. Nope. Here's what the bad leaves look like today:



Luckily, there are a lot of OK leaves:





Dang it, I should have fixed the problem as soon as I saw the first signs... Live and learn. Last night I poured a gallon of pure water in the res to dilute it down around 570 ppm. Today I changed the water:

pH:........5.56
ppm:........525
res temp:..67.8°

In spite of this, the plant has been really growing fast this week!





Felt the roots for slime, but didn't find any. So I think they're ok:



After the water change was finished, I began LST. Never did this before. I hope I do it right:



Here she is bent over with the PC fans running:



Poor girl... She's been through a lot already and now I'm stretching her sideways in front of 2 fans. I hope this works the way it's supposed to.

Now the good news:



I got 2 tickets to the Fucking NFC Championship game!!! At Lambeau Fucking Field!!! That is, if the Packers make it that far. They have the best record in the NFL, so they have a good chance. I'm thinking maybe they'll end up playing the 49'ers.
Tickets to the game were impossible to buy unless you're a season ticket holder... or you use a wheelchair like me. The Packer ticket office sent me an application to buy some wheelchair seats and I sent it in the next business day. I'm an old Packer fan, since I'm originally from Wisconsin. It's gonna be fuckin cold in that open field stadium on Jan 22nd, but I'll dress for it. Looking forward to some good, clean violence and high QB ratings.

hey dave. i haven't posted in here but i've been following your grow here. i've been growing my pineapple chunk pheno via clones/cross pollinated offspring for a little over a year so i love following PC grows.

she's looking great despite a few bumps that you've had. the lst looks good.

i was sort of hoping that you would have the same pheno as me but it doesn't look that way. mine has double serrated leaves on most of the fans.

i'm interested in the other phenos though because at some point i'll want to buy a pack. the one i got was just a lucky freebie. yours looks to be fairly indica dom like the description says.

great job and good luck. i'll be poppin' in from time to time to check it out.

Total Head said:

hey dave. i haven't posted in here but i've been following your grow here. i've been growing my pineapple chunk pheno via clones/cross pollinated offspring for a little over a year so i love following PC grows.

she's looking great despite a few bumps that you've had. the lst looks good.

i was sort of hoping that you would have the same pheno as me but it doesn't look that way. mine has double serrated leaves on most of the fans.

i'm interested in the other phenos though because at some point i'll want to buy a pack. the one i got was just a lucky freebie. yours looks to be fairly indica dom like the description says.

great job and good luck. i'll be poppin' in from time to time to check it out.

Click to expand...

Hey, feel free to pop in any time. It helps to hear from an experienced grower like you. Glad to know that I haven't totally messed up this grow yet.

Today I'll start with the good news... The plant is still growing fast, and is growing some new tops due to the LST. And the training is looking good:



Now the bad news... Her leaves are showing more damage from nute burn. The dilution last night down to 525 ppm didn't stop the spread of the burn:



So today I diluted the res water down to 477 ppm before fiddling with the pH... then it went up to 505.

One thing about hydro is that it doesn't take too long for a problem to get out of hand. When you see a problem, you really need to jump on it fast.

I also spotted something else that could maybe be a problem. I noticed that the fog, which is supposed to stay inside the res, is leaking out the top of the net basket. So I wonder if the leaves are getting an 'accidental' foliar feeding???





You can't see it in these photos, but the fog is wafting up into the big fan leaves. My PC fans are blowing across the top of my res and pulling the fog right out onto the leaves. So that led me to wonder whether that unintentional foliar feeding could be one of the causes of the nute burn. For now, I removed the fogger. I'll wait until the leaves are consistently healthy and lush before putting it back in the res. I might have to stuff some STG in the gaps of that cover on the net pot.

pH:...5.77
ppm:...505

I think that doing a SCROG is a bridge too far for me right now. I'm just going to LST this plant across the lid of my container. Sure, I'll get "popcorn" buds farther down on the plant, but I never intended to reach perfection. At this point, I'm just trying to nurse her back to health.

Very nice, Dave! Looking like a pro canopy already!

You want to keep that fog inside the tote. Absolutely. I would worry more about mold or PM before accidental foliar feeding, though.

The nute burn was caused by too much at the root level. Nothing else. Back down on that nute to somewhere around 350-400ppm. I don't think it's quite the size for 500ppm just yet. The initial train looks good... side branches jutting upwards at the same level. You're doing it right.

Edit:
Don't freak out about seeing more burn spots even after you reduced your concentration. The period of overnute as imprinted on the plant's growth history needs to 'burn out' before it balances off again. Just cut back drastically like I said... AN can be deadly on the overnute.

Edit 2:
Fog wouldn't penetrate straight hydroton, right? Hey, hydroton beats hail for once! Lol.

lordjin said:

Very nice, Dave! Looking like a pro canopy already!

You want to keep that fog inside the tote. Absolutely. I would worry more about mold or PM before accidental foliar feeding, though.

The nute burn was caused by too much at the root level. Nothing else. Back down on that nute to somewhere around 350-400ppm. I don't think it's quite the size for 500ppm just yet. The initial train looks good... side branches jutting upwards at the same level. You're doing it right.

Edit:
Don't freak out about seeing more burn spots even after you reduced your concentration. The period of overnute as imprinted on the plant's growth history needs to 'burn out' before it balances off again. Just cut back drastically like I said... AN can be deadly on the overnute.

Edit 2:
Fog wouldn't penetrate straight hydroton, right? Hey, hydroton beats hail for once! Lol.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the guidance, Jin. I feel like you're leading me through a house with all its lights shut off. You know where all the obstacles are and I'm still blind to a lot of them. I'll try diluting the res down a lot more.

Yeah, I never noticed that fog leakage problem with a net pot full of Hydroton. So in that respect, Hydroton wins. I need to plug those leaks somehow, probably by stuffing Hail in the cracks.

It's fun doing that LST training. I really like seeing the new tops forming. Not too much work either.

looking nice dave i cant wate to see this girl nugging up for u buddy keep up good work

ppm:........368
pH:........5.66
res temp:..76.4

As you can see, I diluted the res water WAY down. I did it by siphoning out over a gallon of res water and pouring in pure water. No rocket science, I just guestimated.

As for the LST, I've got 3 strings tying it down now. She's still growing fast, in spite of the damaged fan leaves.

Later this week I'm going to flip to 12/12 with the lights and start feeding her flowering nutrients.

Pics from 01-01-2012:


These are the bottom 2 strings training the plant. I added a third today.


She's being trained to the left in this photo. You can see where the top string (now the middle one) is looped around the plant.


You can see the bottom string pulling to the left in this photo.


I shoved some wet Hail in that hole to stop the vaporized res water from leaking out. The tape covers the crack in the lid.


One thing that I noticed that's disconcerting is the white junk on that one leaf.

juggalo grower said:

looking nice dave i cant wate to see this girl nugging up for u buddy keep up good work

Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragement, man! I hope I can fix the problem with those damaged leaves. Diluted the res water way down, as you can see in my previous reply. Maybe that will help her get better.

Pestilence:


This is one of the older leaves now. Really dry and crumbly.


Here's what it looks like on newer leaves.

This plant malady has been spreading. Even after lowering the nute concentration below 400 ppm, the damage doesn't seem to be abating yet. Newb that I am, I'm starting to wonder if it might be something other than nute burn? I'll change the water this weekend and will up the nutes a bit from where they are.

War:


Fuck! I increased tension on one of the strings and SNAP! About 20% of my plant broke right off of the main stem. Poor girl. I'm afraid that she might be on her last leg, but I won't give up without performing CPR.


Here she is, headless.


And here's her lifeless, severed head.

I'm not giving up yet. I see this as a good way to learn how to maybe bring a plant back from very bad health. I don't expect too much bud from her, if any, but at least I might learn something.

You definitely could have cloned her with that top! If you had her in some water, you might could re-attach it. Just tape it on there. I've seen several people do that. After a week or 2 they take the tape off, and she's healed √

Psychild said:

You definitely could have cloned her with that top! If you had her in some water, you might could re-attach it. Just tape it on there. I've seen several people do that. After a week or 2 they take the tape off, and she's healed √

Click to expand...

Amazing... I never would have thought that would be possible if no one had told me about it. Thanks for the ideas. But her head's down the toilet now. RIP, baby. Hopefully, she'll grow another one like the alien in that movie "Men in Black".

I guess you could call it an unintentional topping. Kind of extreme, but hopefully not the end of the world. If I get some buds off this plant, it'll prove that these weeds are resilient buggers.

She was still looking pretty sick tonight, so I decided to try raising the ppm level of the nute solution. It had been down in the mid-300's. So I added:

• 10 ml Sensi-Grow A
• 10 ml Sensi-Grow B
• 5 ml B-52

(All Advanced Nutrients products)

That raised the concentration up to 610 ppm.
Then I adjusted the pH up to 5.67.

Tomorrow I'll change the water. I'm thinking of raising the ppm's even higher then. One thing that I maybe should have considered is that the B-52 stuff that I mixed in the res must have added a lot of ppm's without adding any minerals. So maybe with this mixture I need a higher concentration of "nutes" in my res than a typical mixture containing more minerals. Tomorrow I'll shoot for somewhere in between 500 ppm and the 1100 ppm or so that AN recommends.

Anyway, here are photos from today:


She's growing and climbing in spite of all the leaf damage.


She's got some beautiful roots. Lots of fishboning above and below the water.

That's exactly correct. It's just a very extreme top is all. The rest of the surviving plant still looks robust and healthy. It's not that great a loss. They'll just divert their energy to the remaining growth to make up for it.

That leaf burn is just 'history' marks from your mishap. It takes a while for the spots to play out. As long as you have new healthy growth without burn, which you do, then you're fine. Just keep at that thing, especially with those healthy roots... You can still harvest way better than last time.

lordjin said:

That's exactly correct. It's just a very extreme top is all. The rest of the surviving plant still looks robust and healthy. It's not that great a loss. They'll just divert their energy to the remaining growth to make up for it.

That leaf burn is just 'history' marks from your mishap. It takes a while for the spots to play out. As long as you have new healthy growth without burn, which you do, then you're fine. Just keep at that thing, especially with those healthy roots... You can still harvest way better than last time.

Click to expand...

It's hard to see in those small photos that I posted, but there's damage to most of the leaves on my plant. It just isn't as severe and obvious on all of them as it is on the worst ones. It was spreading to the newer leaves like the one shown in my second photo (in post #71) above, too. And it appeared to continue spreading even during the days after I lowered the nute concentration down to around 340 ppm.

SO... I could be wrong, but I decided to try something different, which is to increase the nute concentration, thinking that maybe, just maybe she had a case of nutrient deficiency after all. If I'm wrong, it won't take too long to discover it. But I think it's time to try something different. She was getting pretty ugly and getting worse fast. I'll check on her closely throughout each day until I'm sure that she's doing ok, and if she gets worse, I'll know for sure that it was nute burn all along.

Flipped to flower phase today. Changed water, using:

• Sensi-Grow A & B

and nothing else.

Changed T5 light bulbs to a mixture of 2700°K and 3000°K. Changed the light schedule to 12/12.

Also lowered plant down to the floor to give it more vertical space to grow. And hung up my light fixture on height adjustable hangers & lowered it way down to within inches from the plant.

Here are those beautiful roots after I changed out the water:


Here's a view of the plant now from above:

I already trimmed off most of the really bad, dry leaves here.

Here's another view, pulled back a little:


Now let's make some buds!!!

01-10-2012 afternoon:

After increasing the nute concentration, the plant is looking much better. So far, so good. I trimmed off all of the worst leaves, so she looks better and it made the airflow better down at the bottom. The temp down there is around 71° now. Keeping the water temp down to around 74°. Also bought a second air stone. It's made out of aluminum and is supposed to make fine bubbles. Only $5 at a pet store (PetSmart).

Here are 2 pics of the worst leaves that I haven't trimmed off:





I also started pulling a secondary branch with a string.

Before:



After:



I think that opened up the plant to light & airflow a lot better. Plus, it's pulling her over to that empty spot on top of the res lid.

Here are 2 pics of new leaves, looking nice and healthy:

Took these pics last night. First one just shows how she grew since the same afternoon. (See previous post.)



Here's just a picture of fresh new growth. There's a white spot on one leaf here. Saw one other. I'm still checking for possible signs of nute burn.


The next 2 pics just show the LST training: