Diary:31/05/07: Flood & Drain 1st Try

[home.grower]

...Nice compact plants, they are filling in nicely. I noticed not a ton of secondary shoots, any reason or just the way the strain grows?

Great work thus far, I think you are going to have a nice ass harvest. What size trays are those? I see you have 16 plants on each...maybe a 5 by 4?

These plants arrives as clones and didn't have much in the way of veg time. They were literally rooted in cubes then moved straight to flower. It was around 20 days from cutting to bloom day1. That is why they are small and probably why they have little or no branches.

Each tray is about 2'x4' as is the reservoir. The area taken up is close to the dimensions you said 5'x4' under 1x600W-HPS.

Thanks for dropping by

[home.grower]

On my last visit to the garden I added to the reservoir a

fresh supply of water (70L)
25mL Fulvic F-1
25mL Humic H-2
10mL CarboLoad
5mL Barricade
50mL Overdrive
20mL Sensi Bloom A&B
30mL Mother Earth Super Tea Bloom

That sounds like a lot but my resultant EC was only 1.0!

I wanted to mix a very dilute formula so that I could leave the system flooding over night... I need not worry about drowning the roots because my submersed air line beneath the pots is still functioning and providing oxygen to the roots. The last fixture was the pH @ 5.6

This morning the EC had risen to 1.2 and the pH was around 6.2. I pH downed and won't make any more ammendments today. I'm certain they have swelled up a little since yesterday, but it isn't quite time for the girth spurt. fingers crossed!!!

[Weedhound]

The changes in pH and EC are constant variables and demand attention.

I have been quite used to growing in potted coco media and taking EC levels to the max... The signs of over fert come on much slower with soil. Hydro is very much unforgiving to those who do not apply their full attention to their work. but I can see that the rewards can be quite generous

That is as accurately said as anything I've ever heard. :thumbsup: Sums hydro up beautifully in my book.

I don't think it makes much difference about plant size in hydro however....everything seems to move pretty fast through the whole plant either big or small imho....

[home.grower]

YeeHaa!!

~Ok, so I haven't kept the diary toally up to date for the past few days. but not much has changed really.

~After adding the full host of nutes on day 46, I have only had to pH down every other day. The EC hasn't risen an awful lot because I only EC'd upto 1.2 when I added all the nutes. The EC had rose a little, but not much. I added a dash of Mother Earth Bloom and Overdrive to the mix after 3 days. Ph downing was the only requirement up until yesterday. Yesterday, I emptied 15L and topped off with 30L of tap water. I then adjusted the pH to the required range.

~Today I've emptied the reservoir and flooded the system for three quarters of an hour. I then added a splash of Mother Earth Bloom and have left the system running with a very mild dose of organic feed.

~Later on I will add the last full mix of nutes to the reservoir (F1, H2, Barricade, Sensi Bloom, Overdrive, (I'm all out of carboload)).

I have taken a few pix of the progress so far. I have spent some time trimming the decaying leaves off many of the plants. All plants now have very firm buds (not attributed to trimming the leaves). Not all of them have the same firmness all the way down the plant, but this will change over the next few days. I'm anticipating a spurt in girth any time soon aswell. I'm not certain it will happen, but I've seen it happen on every grow to date (except the ones that were harvested prematurely).

[crazywill]

Hey home.grower They look great !! I have been following your grow and it looks like you study up alot before you started.Good growing man. PEACE

[home.grower]

Hey home.grower They look great !! I have been following your grow and it looks like you study up alot before you started.Good growing man. PEACE

Thanks for looking in crazywill. I have attempted NFT many years ago when I began growing. I was unsucessful to say the least. Over the course of time I conversed with people knowledgeable about cultivating herb, read books, surfed the net, and utilised Cannabis.Com to develop my, then, soil/coco skills. I am a confident soil/coco grower.

Waste is a big problem with soil/coco type mediums. It is also costly buying half a tonne of it every time a new set of strains are put to flower, then having to dispose of it! I've put my mind to hydro as a cost effective means of reaping the same, if not better, rewards with less waste (not quite carbon neutral, but tending towards)...

As the pix show, the plants are very small and started off even tinier. This will be an example of what I can expect as a minimun yeild per 600W-HPS. I will then be able to calulate my saving in waste material and compare my average soil/coco results with my new mininum hydro expectations (bearing in mind I didn't veg these clones when I put em on the hydro system).

Example of a saving...

32 plants would normally start in half litre pots [32 * 0.5 = 16L of soil]
Then repotted to 6.5L pots with clay [32 * 5 = 160L of soil (+ 20L clay)]

Then they take up shit-loads of space after purchasing around 200L of grow medium.

Hydro, this time round, Less than 50L of clay for the same amount of plants, and if I were to fill the garden with 5 hydro systems (one under each 600W-HPS) then I'd have 32 * 5 = 160 plants that I'd veg for a week instead of flowering straight away that should produce much more than a room rammed with soil/coco grown plants.

This is all an experiment to see if its worth becoming a converted grower. ATM I'm not looking back! I'd so love to do this again, but patching up where I went wrong this time and having a much better result next time. Cheers for tuning in crazywill.

[home.grower]

Welcome! Akwaaba!

It's day 53. I didn't add the full host of nutes yesterday as I planned to. Today I've added a splash of Sensi Bloom A&B and Overdrive to the res accompanied with 15L of tap water. The resultant EC was 1.3 and the pH was left at 5.7.

I've decided to leave the system running on flood for the next few days. I'm sure the buds stay firm when the system floods all the time. And I'm sure they go a little softer when the flood stops. Hmmmmmmm. So I'm experimenting here leaving the system flooding. I'm not in fear of drowning the roots because of the submersed airline beneath each pot.

When I've done soil type mediums in the past, at this stage I can never seem to keep up with the watering (reaching the end of week 8). The plants normally tend to drink and drink and drink in my garden. There are potted ~(15L pots)~ plants in the room and they are consuming 3L daily and are looking wilted every day. They are into week 10 of bloom.

Back to the Hydro... A couple of the plants that look like G13 appear to be finishing up. They are quite stiff and well packed. I'll attempt some photgraphy soon. The Sensi Stars will then follow. I think the tall ones are AK47 from their mature appearance and they will take longest as their flowers keep deflating when the pump is off. Whatever else in on there will follow inbetween or after, but I think that is all the strains there are. (Maybe some of the ones I think are AK47 are actually Chronic, they look similar to me).

Not long til harvest folks!

[home.grower]

Welcome folks.

Events have occurred which are affecting the overall production of bud.

New clones have arrived early for the next grow and there has been no place to store them as I expected to be finishing up any time soon. I've had little choice but to expose the blooming plants to 24hrs of light for 2 days.

Growth has been affected in so far as 50% of tops have begun at least 1cm of new vertical growth. This is something I shall photograph. Bud formation has been steadily firming up and all plants are very firm. The supposed AK47 strain looks like it will be a late finisher. The Sensi stars should be coming out sometime in the next 5 days, as will numerous G13. The mentioned strains are budding up and swelling beyond the length of the pistils. The rest still look like they have 7-14 days left to swell up.

I haven't been feeding them much either. The res pH has remained balanced with daily amendments while the EC has been kept below 1.2. I might do a res change tomorrow also.

Tomorrow I have to section the garden in 2 halves to enable me to get back to finishing these little monsters. I can't wait to chop them. I've cut off a sneaky bud from what looks and smells like Bug Budha Cheese. I shall smoke it in about 5-7 days then ~I'll have a rough idea of the final product.

Tune in for more updates and pix tomorrow folks

Happy Toking

[home.grower]

Welcome back...

I've divided the room in to two. I haven't done it properly. There are a couple of reasons. One of them being that doing a lot of work to remove it after a week or two? So, a bit of light is still creeping into my bloom area.

I added final phase to a new fresh reservoir and pH balanced it. At day 60 I'm deciding to be a light weight and throw the towel in. I will leave the system on timed flooding for the next 7-10 days. I will then chop the lot!

Today I rinsed 2 of the smallest (as near as finished) plants under a running tap for a few minutes and chopped em. Combined, the weight was 45g / 1.5Oz wet (one was 20g the other 25g). By the time those dry fully 7-10 days should be near ending.

I've take some pix of the stage I'm about to shut down @.

[home.grower]

the pix!