Waterfarms = Blue Mountain Durban - White Widow - White Russian

Hello there boys'n'gals! I'm back for another 'casual' grow journal - its been a while since I've journaled on RIU, and its great to be back!

Feel free to follow along with this new grow, and post any comments, suggestions or questions. I will answer as often as possible. I will try to post a picture update every week (or two), and will hopefully get my camera in order here soon to get some properly filtered pics. For this initial post though, the 'ol HPS yellow is making things a bit ugly - sorry about that!

Here are my grow specs:

Plants:
1x fem Medicann's 'Blue Mountain Durban' (BMD)
1x fem G13 Labs' 'White Widow' (WW)
1x fem Serious Seeds' 'White Russian' (WR)

Medium: GH's Waterfarm with hydroton (slightly modified with extra holes drilled in top bucket.
Lights: 2x 600w hps plexi-tube lights duct-cooled
Grow space: Basement, 4'x7' mylar lines grow tent
Nutrients: Dynagro (more info to follow)

Attached pics (Taken Jan 28th @ about 3 weeks from seed):

#1 - Group pic. Left to right, largest plant is the BMD, middle one is the WW, smallest with tin-foil is the WR

#2 - Close up of the BMD, tied down to spread out

#3 - Close up of the WW, got a slow start

#4 - Close up of the WR, started late as I replaced an Alcapulco Gold plant that didn't make it.


Lots more to come...plan to take some updated pics this week, so stay tuned!

Okay, so I'm not having as much time to do this journal as I'd hoped - but here's another pic update.
These were taken through my new HPS glasses lens...turned out okay I think!

About 1 month from the last set... I'm going to start flowering next weekend I'm thinking..

Blue Mountain Durban




White Russian




White Widow

Those are some monsters. Looking absolutely amazing. Thick stalk all the way up on the White Russian. But I guess that’s the kind of beastly growth to expect from hydro. Excellent! Great to see the difference a month made!

Yeah, they're starting to really speed up - not really stretching at all, thus the thick stems. Normally I'd train them out more and create a rounder, bush-like shaped plant like my Ace of Spades was - but I've been kinda lazy..lol. The White Russian should have been screened and spread-out, but I wanted to keep all 3 of these plants in the same tent on the same schedule, so nothing fancy this time 'round..

Flowering will at least double the size of these (i'm expecting), so we'll see what happens in the next month! I'm keeping the lights as low as I can until they start bumping their heads!

Not much difference since Monday (Feb 25th), but I got a good group shot this evening so decided to do another pic update...

Left to Right - BMD, WR, WW



Blue Mountain Durban


White Russian


White Widow


..can already tell that these will be iNsAnE in about 2-3 weeks from now - flowering time will be interesting for sure!

Man they are already big they’re gona be huge. Have they been topped or trained? They look awesome and I like those hydro buckets I think I am going to try one someday soon as an intro to hydro.

Dragon Daddy said:

Man they are already big they’re gona be huge. Have they been topped or trained? They look awesome and I like those hydro buckets I think I am going to try one someday soon as an intro to hydro.

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Yeah, the tent is really going to fill up in the next few months. I didn't top any of them, but I did slightly train each of them out to the sides a bit - to create more round-like bushy plants. I do have a screen but I decided not to bother with it this round.

Switching the lights over to 12/12 tonight. Feeding time soon, and possibly a pic update tonight - stay tuned!!

Okay, here we go!

Again, it's only been a few days so there's not a huge difference - but this will be good to journal since the lights are now switched to 12/12 for the duration of this grow. Going to need to watch these carefully now, as they will indeed start stretching out now!

Group Shot - Left to Right, BMD - WR - WW




Blue Mountain Durban




White Russian




White Widow

You know I do see the difference of a few days on each of them especially the White Russian and the white widow. Growing strong and looking excellent.

Dragon Daddy said:

You know I do see the difference of a few days on each of them especially the White Russian and the white widow. Growing strong and looking excellent.

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Yeah, I'm extremely pleased with how these girls (all are showing pistils already..lol) are looking 'health-wise' at this point. I had an issue with my pH for awhile during the first part of veg - didn't have a working pH meter to test my water, and once I finally got a replacement one I discovered that the pH for all 3 plants was running just at/under 5.0. So no doubt I was getting lockout = leaves drying up, droopy, etc... but now that that's been sorted, things have really turned around.

Here in Calgary, we've just gone through the coldest February in recorded history ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/comments/aw4zni/calgary_just_had_its_coldest_february_since/ ), so even though this is of course an indoor grow, I think my plants actually have benefited from having the colder temps in my basement keep the grow tent cooler. The 2x 600w HPS lights can make for a hot tent, so the lower 'ambient' temperature outside the tent seems to help. Much easier to grow indoors during the winter here than during the summer, from my experience anyways... I've never been too concerned with humidity, as we have a house humidifier running for our hardwood flooring - so I've always taken that for granted, although Calgary is known for being very dry.

Some extra info on my grow for my records:

Water:

RO filtered water - out of the tap/filtered at ~13 PPM, & ~7.0 pH

Nutirents:

Veg:
Dynagro: Liquid GROW ( https://dyna-gro.com/product/liquid-grow/ )
GH Flora-series (Grow, and Micro) ( https://generalhydroponics.com/floraseries )

Flower:
(Still to be determined, but fed tonight with AN Iguana Juice Bloom ( https://www.advancednutrients.com/secret-menu/iguana-juice-organic-oim/ ), and GH Flora-Micro)
- Also supplemented with a small amt of GroTek HeavyBud ( https://www.hydroexperts.com.au/Grotek-Heavy-Bud-Available-in-1L-/-4L-NPK-0-1-2-Increase-Weight-Density)

Grow Room Temps & Airflow Specs:
- Temps steady @ ~73-75 F - measured at floor, center of tent.
- Airflow supplemented by:
= 1 intake fan in bottom left-hand corner
= 1 small fan at plant-top level - center (switch direction occasionally - non-oscillating)
= 1 'dual-fan' tower fan running just the bottom of 2 @ low speed from right side (floor lvl) of tent near the WW
= filter inside tent w/ mounted fan drawing in smell and used air (pushing through light-tubes from right to left and out) to keep temps down, and ducting (6" ducting) out the top-left-rear of tent corner.

Your plants are what my plants want to be when they grow up. Looking great man, kudos. I was stressing my plants without more humidity, guess you have yours dialed in. Do you know what sort of temperature and humidity your tent has been running at? Cheers from another Calgarian.

Good looking girls,Im in the frosty city as well.Have you used city water before the RO system?Im in hydro also and have always used tap water.

pain4life said:

Your plants are what my plants want to be when they grow up. Looking great man, kudos. I was stressing my plants without more humidity, guess you have yours dialed in. Do you know what sort of temperature and humidity your tent has been running at? Cheers from another Calgarian.

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Hey there P4L! Welcome!!!!! ...just checked my humidity in the tent a few mins ago and it's at 35% (the lights just came on @ ~12 here) - not sure if that's good or bad, but the gals seem to be doing good. What part of the city are you in, if you don't mind me asking? I'd love to get together sometime and learn together! I think this is about my 14-15th time growing (started in 2008-9), but there's still always so much to learn - its part of why I love it so much! The first 8-9 rounds were in soil, but since switching to these waterfarms it's been a much cleaner experience using only water buckets!

Glad you're joining this journey as I also sit-in on yours to learn together!

myke said:

Good looking girls,Im in the frosty city as well.Have you used city water before the RO system?Im in hydro also and have always used tap water.

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Welcome myke!! Also great to meet another YYC grower! I bought an RO filter system back in 2010 (i think it was) and have noticed quite a difference in just the ease of starting from seed with cannabis plants. Really all it does is give you a more basic starting water with a much lower PPM. It does filter out most of the calcium though, which then needs to be supplemented back in with a cal-mag additive. I have some cheapy measuring pens that work quite well for checking PPM (EC) and pH on my water and nute mix before adding it each time. Tap water is also fine I think, but when we decided to get the RO filter system, it was also because we wanted better drinking water where we are (down in the Mackenzie Towne area), as the tap water has a bit of smell to it. So it was a no-brainer - cost us about $200 to install it right at the kitchen sink (where I fill our add-back water buckets every day..lol)

...gosh darn-it, is it COLD today AGAIN... got to make a trip to Incredigrow today and p/u some flowering nutrients. What grow-shop do you guys use in the city for your supplies?

Healthy lookin' plants!!

leather lungs said:

Healthy lookin' plants!!

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Thanks LL! I appreciate your comments and visit to my journal! Please follow along and feel free to comment and ask any questions as things progress! This is flowering 'Day 1', so things are going to get exciting in the next few months for sure!

Thanks Dayzt,my water comes from bearspaw 180 ppm yours is maybe from glenmore res.? I still have to use calmag but Im only on my third grow so still lots to learn.We should have a YYC taste test get together thing,be nice to share info with someone.

myke said:

Thanks Dayzt,my water comes from bearspaw 180 ppm yours is maybe from glenmore res.? I still have to use calmag but Im only on my third grow so still lots to learn.We should have a YYC taste test get together thing,be nice to share info with someone.

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Ah yes, so you're on the west side of town... sounds like you have better water out of the tap there from bearspaw - yeah, ours is from GR I think. But 180 isn't too bad - last time I checked our tap water, it was well over 250 ppms I think - i'll have to check it again, its been a long time!

I think putting together a taste'n'share get together is an AWESOME idea! It looks like there's 4-5 of us in YYC that I've noticed here since last night...exciting!

I felt like taking some pics tonight, so I've got an update featuring the 'backside' of each of these plants - as I've turned them all 180 degrees for these shots! Enjoy!

Tent Temps / Humidity




Group Shot - BMD, WR, WW - From the Backsides




White Widow






White Russian






Blue Mountain Durban