Ask Us Anything: Sharing Knowledge 420 Style

DeVille said:
It's just. I do all these "fancy" things and yes indeed - I do get phenomenal quality buds to smoke and life is good and all that crap. Then I have this friend who grow in autopot like me. He doesn't do anything except filling the tank with water and let them grow. Then I think he feeds one time with bloom nutes (canna flores - same as I use during bloom) and that's it. And his buds are phenomenal too. So I some times do wonder if I am making too much work for myself.

He has a completely different method of growing. He just flowers 2-3 plants at once and keep putting in a new one when he chops one down. No scrog or training or anything. When I did that - I only did that once in my life and that was my first journal in here. I always scrogged before but this time I were in such a great rush. So I grew for speed only, not quantity. And that run our yields were very much comparable. I got around 80g per plant without any training. So does he. so yes, I keep wondering if I am making too much out of this. But I am getting "better" I only use a few products now compared to the first years. Then I had to try everything
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If i would go without some Nutes and just run Tap Water, and im using pre-fertilized Soil atm, my Plants would die off. I think this heavily depends on what Soil he uses, or what quality of Water runs out of his Tap. Where i live, i can get some very detailed Information about Water quality, but to make it short, it comes out of my Wall at around 130 ppm. I know there are some very small amounts of Nitrogen in form of nitrate, P in form of Nitrate and other secondary Nutes like Ca and MG. I think you get the Point. A little bit of everything. But at all, these are very small amounts and they are caused by Farmers (with N and P). They are not allowed to feed that much here because of drinking water quality. I dont know about laws in that case where you guys life, but i can imagine that he maybe got some kind of farmer close to him who cares a shit, meaning that his Tap Water is maybe much higher in EC.
 
I'm going away for a couple of weekends. The first weekend away will be 2-3 weeks into flower. I've been looking into watering options. I'm in 3 gallon smart pots with 75% coco, 25% perlite. 4 plants in a 3x3 tent.

From what I can find, the best bet seems to be a timer system on a pump in a reservoir. I've seen other suggestions like using a wick system, or using Blumats.

Does anyone have any thoughts, or recommendations?
 
DobeWan said:
I'm going away for a couple of weekends. The first weekend away will be 2-3 weeks into flower. I've been looking into watering options. I'm in 3 gallon smart pots with 75% coco, 25% perlite. 4 plants in a 3x3 tent.

From what I can find, the best bet seems to be a timer system on a pump in a reservoir. I've seen other suggestions like using a wick system, or using Blumats.

Does anyone have any thoughts, or recommendations?
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Do you normally water using a specific amount of fluids? If yes, get a "digital timer". If not, get a "mechanical timer". Both timers of course needs a small water pump (160 GPH). You will also need tubing to go from the pump to all 4 plants, and 3 Tee fittings. You can make very nice hydro halos with some PVC and 45º elbows, then just drill 1/8" or 3/32" feed holes.
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Skybound said:
Do you normally water using a specific amount of fluids? If yes, get a "digital timer". If not, get a "mechanical timer". Both timers of course needs a small water pump (160 GPH). You will also need tubing to go from the pump to all 4 plants, and 3 Tee fittings. You can make very nice hydro halos with some PVC and 45º elbows, then just drill 1/8" or 3/32" feed holes.
IMG_20170606_150430778_HDR.jpg
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That halo is awesome. I water a specific amount daily and have a digital timer now, I'll get a second just like it. Thanks for laying out exactly what I need.

I water to runoff, about 10-30% range currently (still in veg). Would I want to adjust the amount to minimize runoff, to avoid the plants sitting in standing water?
 
SO with one of those timers can you set it to water a certain amount every so days? Like, say I give my plants half a gallon each every 3 days, do I just fill a reservoir with half a gallon and trust it distributes to each plant evenly?
 
TheFertilizer said:
SO with one of those timers can you set it to water a certain amount every so days? Like, say I give my plants half a gallon each every 3 days, do I just fill a reservoir with half a gallon and trust it distributes to each plant evenly?
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Thats how it works with my drip system. I Made Sure all pipes are evenly Long so that the Same amount of water fits in there. But i Put a 4 way valve in between (i do have 4 plants) to make Sure i can still Feed individually. That was really important for me. It was a DIY solution, thats why it looks like that ;)
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DobeWan said:
That halo is awesome. I water a specific amount daily and have a digital timer now, I'll get a second just like it. Thanks for laying out exactly what I need.

I water to runoff, about 10-30% range currently (still in veg). Would I want to adjust the amount to minimize runoff, to avoid the plants sitting in standing water?
Click to expand...

TheFertilizer said:
SO with one of those timers can you set it to water a certain amount every so days? Like, say I give my plants half a gallon each every 3 days, do I just fill a reservoir with half a gallon and trust it distributes to each plant evenly?
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Here's the kicker! A digital timer can be programmed down to a single minute which means your pump will have to run for an entire minute or more in 60 second increments, so you need to find out how much water is emitted from your pump in that amount of time, and hopefully after feeding 4 plants, it won't be too much water.

In truth, I know a way to generate a specific amount from your pump, but this involves using a microcontroller and building some circuitry, but once done, can be used to run a pump for any amount of time measured in milliseconds, so essentially, I can fire my pump for 1 or more seconds if I chose to. This is how I change my res every week, I program my MCU to produce a specific amount of gallons (in 1/4 gallon increments), plus it's helpful to be able to add 3/4 of gallon of RO to top up a res and lower the PPM marginally. I keep some video updates in my journal if anyone wants to check it out. The overall project is a work in progress, but the water measurement quality is precise enough for me.
 
HI GUYZ..!
I am a new grower and i would like to ask some questions..actually 2..
1) how many lumens per sq.f. we need..i have 2300lm LED light for 1.5 sq.f. grow space and i have it 18'' away from the plant..is that good enough or not??.. and
2) i am in week 2 from germination and my plants are already 5 inches..when should i stop watering with seedling type of watering(keep just moist the top of the soil) and start water my plants normaly??[1 time per day until 10-20% of water will be gettin out of the bottom (cause my pot sizes are not big-based on my grow space), with more water than seedling stage]????
..actually i started the ''good'' watering today morning and i think its a good time for this..
D U AGREE?? or should i do anything different than this?
Any of your help will be appreciated! TY!
 
Damage report from yesterdays falling light incident. As of this am I have only one limb showing signs of suffering. All the top leaders on that one were laying on the rim of the pot and had split the stem but were still attached. It was ugly. The other seems to be ok, it was on the rim too split from the stem but still attached. The overall picture still looks good and I am going to continue my work from yesterday and give em some nutes, carefully.
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scl420 said:
HI GUYZ..!
I am a new grower and i would like to ask some questions..actually 2..
1) how many lumens per sq.f. we need..i have 2300lm LED light for 1.5 sq.f. grow space and i have it 18'' away from the plant..is that good enough or not??.. and
2) i am in week 2 from germination and my plants are already 5 inches..when should i stop watering with seedling type of watering(keep just moist the top of the soil) and start water my plants normaly??[1 time per day until 10-20% of water will be gettin out of the bottom (cause my pot sizes are not big-based on my grow space), with more water than seedling stage]????
..actually i started the ''good'' watering today morning and i think its a good time for this..
D U AGREE?? or should i do anything different than this?
Any of your help will be appreciated! TY!
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We could be way more helpful if you can include a pic
 
2300 is much too Low. Per example, my lights for the very First days are 20w cfl, 4 of them together and each one of them Brings arround 5600 lumens. If you have such a weak light, and that is what it is, you have to Bring it much closer or increasing the Number of light fixtures dramatically. If you were in seedling stage, be careful with lights too Close. You are looking for 15.000-25.000 Lux, that means Lumens per squaremeter, for veg after seedling stage, and between 25.000 and 50.000 Lux for Flower. More ist eben better Till you reach the Point where you have too much. Also important to know, lights are looking a Lot of intensity when they are far away. You only do have to Put powerful lights very far away. Im running my cfl lights arround 1 inch away from the Plant. To avoid Stretch. If your Plant is 5 inches in 6 Days, you need to place a Stick to Support the Main stem, place a Fan in your Box that makes the air move around. That will make your stem stronger. And Bring your lights much closer.
 
What is going on with this leaf ? There are a few leaves on my 420 Trainwreck that look like this. It's showing up on older and middle aged leaves. My impression is that it's a reflection of deficient calcium uptake. Otherwise the plant is very healthy.
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Looks like it may be heat stress along with mag deficiency but thats just my guess. Do you keep a journal? If so you can always go back to about a week before the issue appeared and see if you did anything different that could have led to it. But the heat stress seems it would have shown in the newer growth or growth closest to the light
 
Cannoisseuras said:
Looks like it may be heat stress along with mag deficiency but thats just my guess. Do you keep a journal? If so you can always go back to about a week before the issue appeared and see if you did anything different that could have led to it. But the heat stress seems it would have shown in the newer growth or growth closest to the light
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I agree I had the same issues and your pics looked just like mine
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My guess is too much N is locking out K and Ca. Found THIS on the web, just cool that it's a pic found here on 420.
 
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