1st Hydro - LED Grow With Crop King White Widow From Seed

[VladimirPutin]

Good job Bama,
I had been missing lots of action while I was away.

Glad to see the THC factory is coming online full steam soon!

Vlad

 

[Far East Buds]

Guess I didnt see you had one.... Subbed I'll catch up on it tonight... Sorry bro feel like an ass hat for not asking earlier!


FE

 

[Bamalabrat]

Lol Vlad. I am glad your feeling better. It is great to have you back. Everything is coming together nicely. While you were gone I had major issues, not going to rehash them but most was my fault and would have been easy to correct. Now, I have a plan going forward and everything really is going well at the moment. The WW are getting bigger and are ready for a top I think. The next set of leaves on them will get the top. All of the PPP are going strong. They are about 2 more sets of leaves from getting a top also. Tut1 finally recovered from it's shock and has started to take off fast. It is probably liking the new setup the best. Tut2 is about twice the size it was yesterday (but that is not saying much as yesterday it was very tiny)
Tut2 is the same age as your sprout so this will be a blast to see yours and mine come up. I am holding back my res PPM to accomodate my Tuts. They would get burned if I upped the nutes for the other plants. So right now the others are probably not getting enough but my Tuts should be catching up to them very soon. I plan on increasing the PPM about 50 PPM every 4 days to see how the plants like that. My goal is to finish veg by the end of October. So the next couple of weeks will be slow increases in nutes and then I will be more aggressively increasing nutes after that. Hope to see some good things out of our grows!

 

[VladimirPutin]

I like the sound of it, Bama!
Any new sprout has a chance to be the next plant of the month! I wouldn't mind seeing you taking the gold, my friend!

I feel 9000 times better. It was my mistake for using my bicycle for a 55 kilometer daily work commute in 60 F weather mixed with some rain. Needless to say, I never went back! slave-wage labor kills

Vlad

 

[Bamalabrat]

Guess I didnt see you had one.... Subbed I'll catch up on it tonight... Sorry bro feel like an ass hat for not asking earlier!


FE

LOL FE. Don't worry bro. You were fighting mites and then getting ready for a harvest and grow area rehab. You had one hell of a busy month! I was really caught up in your grow. It was great following along. Mine was filled with drama only because of my noobishness Over excited and under experienced. But now I think that I have the hang of germinating seeds and vegging the sprouts. Temps are dropping (thank God!) so everything seems like it is about to level out. I will get to experiment with Scrogging and Topping soon, so I am pretty excited about that.

 

[Bamalabrat]

Wow Vlad. That is a crazy commute. When I lived in Waikiki I would ride my bike to work but it was only 10 miles and the weather was perfect. When the weather was not I would take the bus. Speaking of slave wages, I went on a job interview a while back. It was right after I came back from working in Australia. It was for a position that I was very/over qualified for. The interview was great and the tests were easy. Finally they got to the part of compensation and I was just floored. The interviewer was like "I see you make quite a lot of money at your last job, unfortunately we can not come close to that". I said ok how close can you come and they were a joke. Serious a joke. They also did not want to have set hours and mandatory overtime if there were issues. I just laughed and laughed. Sometimes you just have to take a pass. I love doing what I do and do not need to make a fortune to do it, however my wife demands a certain level of comfort

 

[Far East Buds]

LOL FE. Don't worry bro. You were fighting mites and then getting ready for a harvest and grow area rehab. You had one hell of a busy month! I was really caught up in your grow. It was great following along. Mine was filled with drama only because of my noobishness Over excited and under experienced. But now I think that I have the hang of germinating seeds and vegging the sprouts. Temps are dropping (thank God!) so everything seems like it is about to level out. I will get to experiment with Scrogging and Topping soon, so I am pretty excited about that.

yah that does pretty much summarize my month!

But I had to stop reading your journal cause I am like oh i should say this or that....but you are now past it...

Hope your issue's are gone for good and I will give you my rookie advice for what it's worth. Sometimes just knowing someone was reading helped. I did learn far too much in that first one ...


FE

 

[Far East Buds]

OMU,
My starting pH is 8.4 and AN says that their nutes work in a range up to 8.5. So I drop it a little and let that run with the DM zone for an hour and a half. Was only going to be an hour but I got called away. Then I added the AN nutes. I have just for fun checked the pH and it is still running in the low 6 range. So it does not appear to have hurt it. The plants all have new growth on them this morning. So....I am thinking no harm done. Even the baby Tut grew a little taller and the leaves have grown a bit over night. I would like to add another 10 ml of each of the nutes on Friday when I add some more water. I really appreciate you dropping by. And congrats on your girls. I pop over to your journal at least once a day.
Also there is a cold front coming through today. Just a mild one. But the temps are 80 or less for the foreseeable future. And the lows are going to be in the 50's. So......Yeah no more heat issues.

I do it bass ackwards... I add up all my nutes in there and the GH stuff I use gets it "real" close.. from 9.0 down to 6.3.. then I need very little to get somewhere in the 5.7-6.2 i am happy anywhere in there... Down does a lot with a little up is harder... when it transpires it will be off again tomorrow..lol as OMU said...

Have you thought of separating the tuts into their own 5 gals? (not attached to Res)so you can run diff levels for them and the WW's? just a thought... throw them into flower 3-4 weeks after WW's that way they will be more ready. separate harvests


Heat sucks!
you saw me battle it ... low 80's for me... my solution and I am still slightly concerned is air from outside in room and back out as much as i can.

I think you get control of the heat you will find it alot easier... i moved my pumps.. out too... mine was HOT!

Just Random Thoughts from FE

 

[Bamalabrat]

FE,

All good advice bro. I only have the one tent and can not create anymore space for the grow right now. Next spring I may build an addition. So I could run the Tuts on a separate res but I think I will continue as is for now. All the plants are growing, just the WW has slowed way down. However the Tuts and PPP are growing very well at the moment.
A split level AC unit for my grow space is on my wish list for sure. However it is not in the cards right now. Ideally I would add an addition to my grow space and the AC/Heater to the space at the same time. I would like to have three different grow areas as well as a mothers station. Your cloner/germination station gave me some ideas that I think would really work for me. I just do not have the time to build anything else. Also I want to get a grow under my belt and see if I really want to continue doing this before I spend any more money.
BTW at a pH of 9 that is no longer water but pretty much straight base! lol

 

[Bamalabrat]

Update 22 Of Veg (I think that I am going to stop my veg counter. I have three different start times and the last one started yesterday!)
So my pH is ~6.2 and my PPM are 330. So that is great.
Temps did get to 92 F but only for an hour and a half. The rest of the time they were low to mid 80's. So that is good.
My res temps stay close to 72 and with the DM zone in there I am not worried at all about that.
The plants all looked good today. The WW's are not really ballooning as you would think. But that is from me keeping the ppm's low. The PPP and the Tuts are loving it though. My PPP's have almost caught up to the WW's. They are about three sets of leaves behind the WW's. That is awesome. Tut1 is starting on it's third set of leaves tomorrow and I am just elated about that. It's stem is green now and not that ugly purplish brown color it was this time last week. Tut2 is still small but it is visibly bigger tonight than it was this morning. The Tuts are really going gangbusters right now. I looked at my pics of Tut1 from four days ago and it was struggling to open up it's first set of leaves. So with Tut2 being healthy I am hopeful that by next Tuesday, all of the plants will be ready to get real aggressive about growing. I was thinking about topping my WW's but have decided not to because they are not getting enough nutes right now and if I top it that will be stressful and it will need more nutes to support 2 stems. So I am going to wait until I have the res ppm up. It probably will be another week before I can get the res ppm up to 600. That is what I am thinking is going to be the minimum needed to support topping all my ladies. I am getting very excited about next week. Just need to keep focused on this week and close it out strong. Still planning on upping the nutes to 400 ppm on Friday night. So that is not a big jump but it will be interesting to see how the plants react to it. So anyway, here are tonight's pics.
First up is the WW's

Next up is the PPP

And finally the Tuts

I really do appreciate everyone for stopping by and saying hi. Thanks for all of you being you.

 

[Far East Buds]

FE,

All good advice bro. I only have the one tent and can not create anymore space for the grow right now. Next spring I may build an addition. So I could run the Tuts on a separate res but I think I will continue as is for now. All the plants are growing, just the WW has slowed way down. However the Tuts and PPP are growing very well at the moment.
A split level AC unit for my grow space is on my wish list for sure. However it is not in the cards right now. Ideally I would add an addition to my grow space and the AC/Heater to the space at the same time. I would like to have three different grow areas as well as a mothers station. Your cloner/germination station gave me some ideas that I think would really work for me. I just do not have the time to build anything else. Also I want to get a grow under my belt and see if I really want to continue doing this before I spend any more money.
BTW at a pH of 9 that is no longer water but pretty much straight base! lol

I totally get yah on the cash outlay kept going for awhile there..

I'll be busting out that cloner soon... got some idea's well as long as one of my three seedlings are female and my two new ones are fems.. so yah it should be out soon.

not sure the outside climate.. I am lucky with a basement set up but if you can pull air in that isn't so hot and send yours out? seemed cheaper to me than ac... but mid to high 80's this week and it shows in there... If ac is needed next year so be it. fall is here soon so..
I was sort of concerned that my electric and monthly expenses would make it not worth it based on what my expense at the dispensary was. Now i am seeing other benefits too... but need to get it refined...

Like the grow keep at it... The nute swap they could really like it...most of the time 2-3 days later it showed for me.


FE

 

[CronicHempHog]

Looks Good

 

[Bamalabrat]

Thanks Cronic. I am in love with your plants though. Wow. Just congrats man! I have to say that right now everything is going really well in the tent. Even my baby Tut is doing well. It has formed it's second set of leaves but they are so tiny right now. By tomorrow morning though they will be easily seen in pics. So I am pretty stoked about that. Tut1 seems to have fully recovered from its shock. It is on it's third set of leaves right now. The PPP's are all looking pretty. Nice even green color and they are putting on their leaves every 4 days. The WW's have slowed down to a crawl at the moment. They probably need 3x the nutes in the res. But they are very green and still getting new growth in. The new leaves just don't pop out every couple of days. This new set is popping out in slow motion over three days. So I am thinking they are both doing well enough. The nute strength will go up slightly tomorrow and again on Sunday. Tomorrow I am shooting for a 400 ppm and Sunday will be shooting for a 450 ppm. And then it will pretty much be 25 ppm everyday until the plants show some form of shock or I hit 1000 ppm. With 25 PPM increments, that should not really affect the plants in a negative way. I will be watching them for any signs of burn. I will also be monitoring the PPM with my meter. If any burn starts to develop, I can add a gallon or two of water and drop the PPM that way. Let them recover for a day and then start back with incremental increases. That is the plan anyway.
I was taking some measurements today. The WW1 is the tallest plant I have at 4". The smallest is the Tut2. I am thinking of placing the scrog at the 16" mark. Anyone with some experience in scroging please let me know what your thoughts on it are. I am trying to get the plants to each fill in about 2.5' squared of the screen before flipping. And then during the first two weeks of the flip, fill in the screen as much as possible with the stretchy bits. At the end of the stretch, I am assuming you stop filling in the screen and just let them form the buds. At least that has been my take away from everyone else's journals. Let me know if I am not thinking correctly. Thanks everyone for stopping by. I did not do pics today. I will do some more I think on Sunday. Saturday I am going to a football game back home. This will be my first time taking my son to a game! We are pretty excited. Hope everyone has a great end of week and weekend. I will be updating tomorrow and Saturday, just no pics until Sunday.

 

[Bamalabrat]

Well since nobody has said not to do it, I am raising the PPM today. I checked on the grow and they look good. Just nothing is really growing fast like I feel like it should. The Tuts are probably the biggest growers right now. I was expecting a slow down, but it seems that they are all really slow at the moment. So I will be adding the nutes and see what happens over the next 48 hours. As I said yesterday, Tut2's second set of leaves are easy to see now. Tut1 is on it's third set but they really should be bigger already. The PPP's have put out two sets of leaves this week, but the WW's are still working on the new set for the whole week. I know it was my choice to pop another seed and slow everything down. I am just getting a little bummed by how slow everything else got. At least they are not showing any deficiencies. So I am not sure as to when the PPM's will get high enough to encourage vigorous new growth, but It will be interesting to see the plants start to speed up as the PPM's go up! In my mind I am thinking the Tuts will speed up to maybe new leaves every three days. Then the PPP's start speeding up. Probably take until next Friday before the WW's start getting enough to eat before they start to take off. At least that is what I am hoping happens. Well, I am going to go add some nutes and take some before and after readings. I will report the readings here in a little while. Thanks for stopping by and have a great Friday everyone.

 

[Bamalabrat]

Ok, I did a before check on the PPM and pH.
PPM was 325 (This was expected)
The pH was ~9 (WTF!!!) I added 5 mL of pH down and one gallon of water.
The pH was ~6 and the PPM was 280. I do not know what happened with the pH of the system. I have not monkeyed with anything since Tuesday. That could be the reason for all of the slow growth! pH lockout of the nutes.
I wound up having to add 20 mL of part A/B and 10 mL of the B-52. This got me to 410 PPM and the pH is still about 6.
Has anyone seen such a drastic swing in the pH using AN pH perfect Sensi line?
I checked the pH 3 times and got the same result 3 times. I was just floored. I will say there was no pythium or slimy residue on anything. My res temps are pretty stable now that the buckets are insulated and the chiller is outside of the tent. Plus ambient temps went down this week. I will be checking my pH about three times a day now. I really do not know what happened. That kind of thing is supposed to be behind me now.

 

[OldMedUser]

I have no idea why you would have 9 for a pH but I couldn't get a real reading from those nutes with my pen. If I got something like that I would re-calibrate my pen and check again. When I used my 4 colour test strips they showed around 6 when the pen showed 8. I took some RO water and put a few drops of pH up in and the pen read high then added pH down and the pen read low so I knew the pen was working ok. It just couldn't give a proper reading of the pH Perfect nutes.

If your water is high in carbonates it could, I guess, give higher reading than what is really there but I don't know for sure. I only ever use RO water so I just leave pH alone and the plants grow fine.

I would run your ppm around 500 or a bit more to get those plants all going but they are always slow at first then as more leaf surface is out they pick up speed. They need more leaf out to create more leaves and the growth goes up exponentially.

Patience grasshopper.

L8r

 

[Bamalabrat]

OMU,

Your advice and counsel is always welcome. I broke my pH pen last week. I am using test kit. It has drops and a color spectrum. That is why I am using approximations. I checked the pH about two hours ago and it was about 5.8. I will be checking it again soon. I had the same thoughts as you about raising the PPM again. I think I will just keep adding about 50 PPM per day. Will see how the plants react. Like I said the PPM's can be lowered instantly by adding a gal of water. I went and bought a 5 gal bottle of RO water. Going to be using those from now on. When I get it home I will test it for pH and PPM.
I hear you about the exponential growth. It is only that I went through some other journals last 2 days and everyone's plants at 3 or 4 weeks was about three times the size of my WW. Now I know that two weeks ago I shocked them really badly. And this week I am starving them. But they did have 2 weeks of fairly good growing conditions. I just feel like everytime I think I have dialed in something, BAM, something else bites my rear end. This is hydro dammit. They should be taking off like rockets!
Ok, so I admit that now I have a much greater appreciation for all the growers out there. This seems easy and there are so many people on here that make it look like cake walks. I am in greater awe of your accomplishments now.

 

[Bamalabrat]

Ok I took some pics. I have some questions and concerns. There is a leaf curling on my Tuts. I have the pics. Maybe this is nothing but they are young and this is peculiar to them. The other plants do not look affected by anything. The leaves are not curled and no spots or tears or anything. My pH is ~6.6 but not sure that is it as AN pH perfect is going to have swings apparently. I did raise the PPM today but the curling was first spotted yesterday. I also only raised the pH by ~65 to 409. So for those reasons I do not think it is nute burn. I also took a look at one of the PPP's roots. I did not like the way they looked. They look a little dirty. Not the bone white that you see on other grows. I added some more DM zone (20 mL) to the res. I also had a feel of the tubes and sides of the buckets. I did not feel any slime. So what gives? The roots are long. I mean like 3 inches past the net pot. That is a lot of growth from Tuesday morning when the roots were not showing through the net pots. So I am torn. They do not seem to be growing roots poorly, but they do not look shiny white. Any ways here are some pics to show what I am talking about with the Tuts:
Here is Tut1

Here is Tut2

Now here are the PPP's in order from 1 - 4

PPP2 is the one whose roots I looked at.

And lastly here are my WW's. WW2 is showing something growing on it's lower nodes. I believe that they are leaves. I did not notice them yesterday but tonight they are noticeable just not big enough to make out what it is.
WW1

WW2

As always I really appreciate the help and advice guys. Thanks in advance.

 

[Spitz]

No help or advice here... Just motivational speaking. You've been working your ass off! Looking forward to following this one. Was looking forward to a DWC run. I think you've cured me of that. BTW, I love my XML! Good luck!

 

[Far East Buds]

I would think at this point up to 500PPM would all be good. I have two little ones in my perpetual that will get that amount very soon.... Be patient. OMU advice i would say is spot on. Not enough leaves yet. When they do get more is when they pop. Pics look good what ever they went through it looks like they are all rebounding well... You bumped the nutes. Watch for 24-48 hour plant reaction and respond accordingly. The others will catch up you will be surprised. Just keep them in veg until they are there.

Be patient your doing well


FE