Dozer's First Hydro - Purple Urke - Medical Marijuana

I took some more pictures. Some macro, some trichs(I'm still getting the hang of snapping trichs with a radioshack microscope and a cell phone camera.


I'm sure you probably feel like the number of pics I've taken so far is a bit excessive. I want to be as thorough as possible in documenting this first journey into hydro. I hope it helps some of you to make happy, healthy gardens of medicine for yourselves. Too much?

D0z3r

Nah, your pics aren't at all excessive. Keep 'em coming.

Most grow journals suffer from exactly the opposite problem so I can't imagine anyone complaining about yours.

Things are super in dozerville boys and girls! My little girls are almost all grown up! The next three weeks is going to be a loooong wait. I'm pretty stoked about the prospects of everything turning out A-O-K. I had an infestation of fungus gnats. I was worried they were something bad, so I squished a couple with clear tape and stuck them to the back of a white notecard, and took them into the hydro shop. They sold me some bugmenot and within three hours, no more gnats! that was easy!
Anyways, since the obnoxious number of pictures I'm taking doesn't seem to bother anyone here, I present to you budporn!!!!!



and some pictures of the garden:


Grand Daddy Purple Erkel is on the way!!!!!!
*Anxoiusly awaiting the ganja stork*

I've asked before, but got no responses. I have a very detailed chart of PPM/EC that includes ML values of ferts I've added. Would anyone find a scan of that useful?
If not, I wont bother.

=)

thats purple urkle?

Actually, it's Grand Daddy Purple Erkel, not Straight Purple Erkel.

When I started the grow I didn't know there was a difference between GDP and purple erkel. I'd had GDP loads of times, but never had I seen purple erkel by itself. As such, I thought 'granddaddy' was a title eluding to original genetics or something. Unfortunately, there's no way to edit the thread title at this point, so I'm here feeling rather silly without much to do about it.


*Blushes sheepishly*

D0z3r

nice one, im 6 weeks thursday flowering some bubblelicious in soil using canna products, if ya intrested my jurny is in my signiture and theres some pics in my gallery too lol. gonna watch this from now lol, subscribed. good luck tho i think u dont need it lol

Pictures from the front lines:

I really like the grow. The bookshelf is a nice touch. Ill stay posted. Good Luck

d0z3r said:

I've asked before, but got no responses. I have a very detailed chart of PPM/EC that includes ML values of ferts I've added. Would anyone find a scan of that useful?
If not, I wont bother.

=)

Click to expand...

Sure thing, I'm sure I could learn a thing or two by seeing what you've done. Surely I'm not the only one, too.

Even if you know it all there's always the chance someone else will have a fresh perspective on it.

And it just can't be said enough... that bookcase is just cool as hell.

Around two more weeks to go!

Looking in that room, and maintaining the discipline to not hack everything down is getting progressively harder every day.

Whew!

the final two weeks, nearly done. Will you be flushing? Im on 7 wweeks come thursday. Your plants look good man keep it up

it looks like the tips of your leaves are turning brown and curling around the edges upward all jagged like. whats wrong with your plant?

I went a bit overboard on the nutes in week 6. Seems I burned them a bit. The damage seems pretty minor all told, and seems to only have affected the most delicate leaves.

Next week, when I flush and drain, there will be no more nutes in the system for the remainder of the grow. I hoped to give the plants sufficient reserves to get them through a week or two of plain RO water and final phase if they needed a bit more time to mature. I chalk the overage up to my inexperience.

D0z3r

Dozer
delicious looking strain there. I am starting my 1st hydro grow, I bought the water farm and was wondering what kind of timing schedule you use...I've read different things but obviously your doing great, also how did you combat the algae?

hey caddy,
The water farm is super, but the design has a few flaws that you should address before beginning. Look up "water farm mods" on google. In my system, roots from one of the plants clogged up the holes between the top and bottom buckets, almost causing the top bucket to overflow. Consequently, most water farm users drill bigger holes in the bottom of each of the top buckets to allow more drainage to occur. I wish I had known about this mod before I started, as drilling holes in a pot with a four foot plant growing out of the top and shifting around is not fun.

Also, I would strongly suggest implementing a cutoff valve between the reservoir and controller unit. I neglected to do this from the onset, and as a result had to remove the reservoir in the middle of my grow.
The problem is if your system isn't completely full, there's no way to PH adjust the nutrient solution before allowing it into your controller. I ended up just adding nutrients directly to the controller and adjusting from there.

Using dual cutoff valves in between the individual "pods" will allow for maintenance-related removal of any of the system components. In my current system, this is impossible, and consequently, If I had a major failure in the back of my system, I would be screwed. Next grow: Definitely implementing this!!!

Also, most water farmers use an air stone in each of the bottom buckets. This oxygenates the water, and prevents root rot in the seeker roots that hang down into the bottom buckets. With both mods in place, I use a 24/7 feeding schedule. Because there's so much O2 in betweenthe hydroton, the roots in the top bucket are fine with being watered 24/7. With the airstone in the bottom bucket, the roots that make their way into the bottom are fine as well.

Algae: oooh algae. This one almost cost me a crop. Algae sucks!!!! Fortunately, it's pretty easy to stop. Basically, you have two options:
Option A: you can completely deny it any light. This is commonly accomplished by placing coco mats over the nutrient rings with a large enough hole to fit the stem through. If this is done at the same time you plant your plants, You're going to want to leave at least a 1" hole in the mat to allow for stem expansion, depending on the size of your grow.
Option B: is to use an algaecidal agent of some sort. I went with this option, as there was no way I could place coco that far back. I used BioCat, and it killed the algae dead in one or two days.

Hope this helps man!

caddyluck said:

Dozer
delicious looking strain there. I am starting my 1st hydro grow, I bought the water farm and was wondering what kind of timing schedule you use...I've read different things but obviously your doing great, also how did you combat the algae?

Click to expand...

Thanks doz3r,
I have the same system and the same algae problem. I searched "algae" and came up with your thread. I didn't think you could use an algaecide because algae is plantlife. I figured the poison might kill the crop. Good to know it doesn't.

Good Looking Out Dozer!! It all makes perfect sense, thanks for taking the time to give me all those tips! I will be implementing them in my own medical grow. I have trainwreck, violator kush and crimea blue starting in little rockwool cubes at the moment--will be starting journal soon (3-5 days)

Thanx again

lookin great Dozer=]

man i just read this whole thing! very impressive first hydro run dozer. ill be staying tuned from here on out.