BendBender's 1st Grow!

[SkooterClowns]

Hey Skoots...

Got a really dumb question that I have been putting off for a while because Ill look like a total nOOb..

When I add water, Do I add nutes to maintain my PPM that I currently have been maintaining since the last drain/refill? If so, do I add the nutes to the water That Im adding to the tank or just add everything to the tank after its been topped off with water?


Another Question....
The 2 white rhinos are growing really fast and drinking about 1.5 gallons of water a day. they are starting to stretch a bit but haven't started to flower at all yet (just very small shoots at the stem roots). they are at week 4 of the GH nutes flowering schedule (after the refill running at about 350PPM - down from about 850PPM) and 12 hours a day of light (for the last week). Is this sound normal? Should I put more aggressive flowering nutes in or just stay on the schedule?



The other 4 plants (2 Purple Kush and 2 Marshmallow) are doing pretty well and Im thinking Im going to start flowering them.

Let me know if you need pics to see whats going on to answer the questions properly...

thanks a bunch

Bendy

Hmmm...the last part of the question is what I will address first. You should not be topping off the tank with water then adding nutes. You should never add nutes directly to your tank...ever.

I'm not sure if I understand the first parts of your question but if so...Usually when we change the mix/grow week whatever...we either a)drain the tank completely of the old mix or b)let the current mix get used up quite a bit...then we add the new mix.

Now if you are talking about topping off the tank, maintaining the current mix, then you should make a new batch of the mix then add it to the tank.
Normally we try to have a bit extra when we fill a tank and use the extra to top it off between changes.



Now this one is interesting. Your PPM is way too low. BTW I am going by the grow schedule I showed you that we use. You should be using the full mix and have it up to ~1400ppm. One way to stop the growing and get the blooming going is to skip ahead a week or two in the schedule. But in this case I would go up 1 week (to week 5 of flowering schedule) and use the full mix per the schedule. I am of course assuming you are still cutting down according to the schedule ie using 1/4 or 1/2 like you were in the beginning and I am also assuming you are using the same schedule we use. I haven't looked over that other schedule at all.

 

[bendbender]

OK... I will add nutes to the water that I am using to top off the tank.

As for your last paragraph, I put in the full amount of week 4 flowering mix (when I drained/refilled)... the plants were showing some signs of nute burn (most likely from the vegging phase and the wrong feeding schedule that I was using). I will move on to week 5 of full strength flowering mix and see how it goes. My PPM of my water is fairly low to start (about 120PPM) so Im thinking maybe I should be around 1000PPM max but I will see how a higher dose goes.

The plants are not showing any signs of nute burn now... growing like crazy and drinking LOTS of water... I am also seeing signs of water on the leaves in a few spots.... Like someone sprayed them with a couple of drops of water.

the big white rhino is about 30" tall now... Im wondering if I should do some trimming or fimming?

thanks a lot skooter... mucho appreciado amigo!

 

[basement grow]

Im thinking maybe I should be around 1000PPM max but I will see how a higher dose goes.

The plants should tell you what nutes you need, too. Way better to underfeed than overfeed. A common misconception is that pushing the nutes to the max will increase yield. Keeping your plants happy will increase it more. Look at some folks running OC+ ferts at about 650ppm max that are cranking out tons of weight. Don't get me wrong, you don't want to starve them, but the genetics of the plant are going to determine how much of any one nute the plant can take. Giving it more potassium than it can use won't make it grow faster to use more, really.

The plants are not showing any signs of nute burn now... growing like crazy and drinking LOTS of water... I am also seeing signs of water on the leaves in a few spots.... Like someone sprayed them with a couple of drops of water.

Most likely just normal transpiration.

 

[Showtime]

Nice setup man. Nice bushy plants to. I have that same thermometer lol. Check out my grow sometime. Oh and I like your diy style.

 

[bendbender]

Basement Grow - Thanks a lot for the advice... I Think Im gonna go about 20 - 30 % lower than the nute chart shows. I plan on skipping forward to week 7 on the schedule on the White Rhinos. Im going to start flowering the Kush and Marshmallow on Sunday with week 6 and see how the plants react.

Showtime - Thanks for the props man... Love your grow. Dammit I wish I had a basement. My previous house (in another state) had a nice basement but I couldnt grow there. I had a super cool landlord back there too.

Got 11 more clones today from the mama plants (6 White Rhino / 5 Purple Kush) I plan on keeping a mother from each of the 2 strains. I was surprised that my hydro plants were almost as tall as the mothers I cut from them which are about 1 month older than mine (an outdoor grow in an ideal environment) .

More pics to come tomorrow and thanks again for the help everyone... really appreciate it.

Bendy

 

[bendbender]

GAK!!!!!!!

I made a rookie mistake today while changing my water and broke off a large lower branch from the main stem. I broke into the hollow part of the main stem. I cut the branch off and quasi-firmly wire tied it back on.... here are the pics.... Will this work or is there something else I should do?

On the White Rhinos I went to week 7 of the flowering schedule (800PPM) as there are no signs of flowering yet (after 1 week). 12/12 on the lights. these things are getting big... about 2 1/2 feet tall at 6 weeks old.

I started flowering the Kush and marshmallow today with week 6 of the feeding schedule (about 650PPM). see how this goes...

Here are the Kushes...

And one of the Marshmallows.... keeping them around for the heck of it.

I got more cuttings from the original moms yesterday... 5 of the Kush and 6 of the Rhinos. I also took cuttings from the large branch that I broke off and labeled them as "2nd Generation" so I dont get them confused with the 1st gen mom cuttings.

And finally here is a pic of the cloner/mom box that I built last week. Looks like it needs more airflow as the temp is around 82 with the door closed. I constructed it with built in air gaps so it draws in cool air from the floor and exhausts the hot air out the top with some PC fans. I can add more PC fans at the top as needed to keep it cool.

Any comments are welcome as usual... thanks for any advice about the broken branch.

Bendy

 

[bendbender]

Well I guess no one loves me anymore... LOL

The broken branch is doing OK and I have topped all the plants. the 2 White Rhinos are starting to bloom and are drinking over 1 gallon of water per day. running 950 PPM week 7 bloom mix on the GH nutes schedule.

the 2 marshmallows and 2 Purple Kush are just finishing their first week of bloom (week 6 at 750 PPM) and are also looking pretty good. drinking almost 1 gallon of water per day between the 4 of them.

Looks like Ill be adding 3 more permits soon so Ill be expanding the grow.

progress Pics coming soon.

Bendy

 

[bendbender]

Hi All... Need some advice please...

My seedlings stems are looking weird and the tops of my Kush babies are pretty faded. there are new leaves coming out though. they were cut from the mom while she was in about the third week of flowering. Theses seedlings are on day 11 in the cloner.

I am on the seedling phase of the GH schedule.270 watts of light running 24 hours. no funny smells in the tank and the PH is at 5.6.

First, here some pics of the Kush... they are very pale compared to the White rhino babies.... the second pic shows the water temp is around 80 degrees.

What has me more worried is the way the roots look. they are like small thorns and there are curly tips on the Rhinos...

The Kushes dont have the curly thing going on... just the little stubs going up the stem.

Im thinking the water temp is too high... any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Bendy

 

[SkooterClowns]

hey Bend....sorry...I haven't been able to spend much time on the forums for the last few weeks.

As for your clones I wouldn't worry about the tops of them at this point. Only thing you need to be targeting is getting roots. The tops will fade and even appear to die off sometimes. None of that matters. You only need roots.

And about roots...I have no idea what those knob things are at the end of your stems. I've never seen that before. Slappy and I are relatively new to cloning ourselves and our experience so far has been to keep an eye on the stems that are getting sprayed. As long as they don't go soft and get all mushy then everything seems to go o.k. in the end. I wish i had some definitive answers for you but like I said I am only drawing on our limited experience.

Hi All... Need some advice please...

My seedlings stems are looking weird and the tops of my Kush babies are pretty faded. there are new leaves coming out though. they were cut from the mom while she was in about the third week of flowering. Theses seedlings are on day 11 in the cloner.

I am on the seedling phase of the GH schedule.270 watts of light running 24 hours. no funny smells in the tank and the PH is at 5.6.

First, here some pics of the Kush... they are very pale compared to the White rhino babies.... the second pic shows the water temp is around 80 degrees.

What has me more worried is the way the roots look. they are like small thorns and there are curly tips on the Rhinos...

The Kushes dont have the curly thing going on... just the little stubs going up the stem.

Im thinking the water temp is too high... any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Bendy

 

[SkooterClowns]

Sorry to see you had an accident with your lower branch. How is it healing? It looks like you did a good job patchin' it back together. Hope it's working out ok.

 

[SkooterClowns]

Just a thought bend...what lighting are you using for your clones? If the water temp is up to 80 degrees you can probably get it under control by cutting down on some of the lights for the clones. Hell we root ours under straight fluorescent. It keeps things a bit cooler than CFLs.

While we have never felt a need to keep track of our water temp 80 degrees does sound like it can be a bit too high. Do you spray your tops?

 

[basementdwell]

yes get the water temp to 65 that has the most available o2 lever for roots. Also some strains are harder to clone. Give it time and foliar spray them nutes till they have roots. Also make sure ur sprayer arent cloged up ?? Maybe add a bubbler to ur rooter aswell, that is if u dont have one. I also saw some kinda mister u can buy to clone with some kinda device that mists h20 droplets onto the roots =) i liked it usually the water cloners are about a wk to root

 

[bendbender]

Hey thanks guys, I appreciate the input.

Basementdwell -Thanks for te link to the chiller. I was wondering that the temp is too high in the water but I remembered that when I used the cloner before the water was around 80 degrees and everything rooted fine. This was using clones from the same moms too. the only difference is that there are more plants in the cloner now and I'm NOT spraying the cuttings as I did on the last set.

I am assuming that the sprinklers are cooling the water a bit as the water is being sprayed. they are all spraying water fine too.

I have tried opening the door on the cloner to see if that promotes better air circulation. Im going to change the water out today and see if that helps.

I am using 4 67 watt CFLs (2700K) that I built into a reflector with glass and an 80 mm fan.


Skoots - Thanks for the reply... I was wondering where you guys were... figured you've been knee deep in your stash.... Ahhh, I know... you FINISHED ALL OF FRANKIE'S STASH OFF DIDNT YOU!!??!??!?!

The patch on Frankie II's stem seemed to work great. She is flowering now. her and her smaller sister are are drinking about 2 gallons of water a day. the canopy is completely filling a 3 x 4 grow room.... Still running week 7 of the GH chart. Very exciting!

 

[SkooterClowns]

Bender? Where are you? I've been watching for an update but you haven't posted. Did your evil landlord get ya?

 

[bendbender]

no, not yet! Im actually moving the grow into an old motorhome I bought so they cant go in there.

Sorry about no update... I thought no one loved me anymore LOL.

THe plants are doing good.... buds on the white rhinos are about 9" long.

I learned an important facet of using the "clown Cloner"... You have to dial back the pressure of the pump so the sprinkler heads are barely spitting out water. Thats what my problem was.... the sprinklers must have been hitting the stems too hard and causing the roots to not grow. now they have about 80 roots on each plant!

Ill post pics tomorrow. Im tired from working on the old shitbox motorhome.

thanks Skoots

 

[SkooterClowns]

no, not yet! Im actually moving the grow into an old motorhome I bought so they cant go in there.

Sorry about no update... I thought no one loved me anymore LOL.

THe plants are doing good.... buds on the white rhinos are about 9" long.

I learned an important facet of using the "clown Cloner"... You have to dial back the pressure of the pump so the sprinkler heads are barely spitting out water. Thats what my problem was.... the sprinklers must have been hitting the stems too hard and causing the roots to not grow. now they have about 80 roots on each plant!

Ill post pics tomorrow. Im tired from working on the old shitbox motorhome.

thanks Skoots

well we're glad to hear your grow is going well. Old motorhome sounds like a great idea! As for the cloner that's something I'm going to adopt to ours as well. We should be getting a higher success rate than we are and I had no idea why we weren't. Thanks for the tip.

Looking forward to the pics. And remember...some clowns are more prone to pantomime but just because they don't talk much doesn't mean they are always watching you (not in a creepy kinda way).

 

[bendbender]

Heres an update.... Im on Week 7 of the grow....

Here are the Kush (left side) and the marchamallows on the right.

Marshamallow buds... pretty small but getting there.

and now the White Rhinos.... HUGE!!!!

Buds are about 9" long.... week 3 of flowering

And now the babies.... the White Rhinos are growing fast now that the roots took.

the Kush babies are tiny... but the roots are growing good now.

pic of the roots....since i turned down the pressure of the cloner heads they took off.... they are a week old

and a pic of the cloner pump... get it from harbor freight... $ 25.00 on sale $15.00. its great because it comes with a pressure dial and lots of extra fittings. also has a nice large filter.

thanks for checking it out.

Bendy

 

[da goon]

Looking good Bender, how do those rhinos smell?

 

[bendbender]

oh man... they are sTaNkY! I actually sampled a bit last night and the high was better than I thought it would be.

 

[Troublesome2]

BEAUTIFUL! Man thats an awesome site. Cant wait for mine to get there just seems so far away lol I jumped in late but ill be here for the finished *subscribed*