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cbdhemp808
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I don't have one. How much do those jobbies cost, how do you use the thing, and what's involved in raising the brix level?
Cbdhemp808's Comparison Grow - HI-BISCUS SIP Bucket Vs. Nursery Pot
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Gee64
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$23 in Canada from The Zon, so 35% cheaper for U.S.
Simple to use. Pop off a leaf, roll it into a ball, mash it up, and squeeze a drop out onto the prism under the plastic flap, then look into it like a telescope, and it will give you a brix reading, but equally as nice is that if the line indicating your brix level in the eyepiece is crisp and precise then calcium is low. If it's fuzzy then calcium levels in the plant are good.
Other than adequate light and all the required trace minerals, brix is really raised by 5 components. Calcium, Phosphorus, oxygen, carbon, and microbes/fungii.
The things you need to boost photosynthesis.
Sips are notorious for too wet in LOS, so that restricts oxygen, and without adequate top watering calcium all sinks to the reservoir below the feeder roots which from my limited experience all form in the top half of the pot.
Under 10 brix and fungals are a real threat, and under 13 brix and pests will start moving in. They come in according to brix levels. Different pests like different low sugar levels.
6 and under and the plant doesn't create enough sugars to create secondary metabolites, which are the plants defense/immunity system, so below 6 and she's pretty much doomed unless you get lucky and nurse her back before bugs and fungals show up.
Is the soil surface in the SIP crusty when dry?
How about the cloth pot's soil surface too?
Crusting soil up top is a key indicator of low soil calcium.
Gee64
Well-Known Member
Here is a chart of what bug groups like which brix levels.
I was thinking humidity and airflow as a cause for Overwatering.
I Can admit, after Much review, that it DOES look like Septoria. Thank you for that!
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cbdhemp808
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Cool. I just ordered this one for $15, 42% off Black Friday...
very cool!
I'm feeding Ca and P. Oxygen in the root zone? ...should be good w/ the SIP domes providing air. I'm using a lot of worm castings and also use myco when up-potting. Looks like worm castings are 20-30% carbon.
My SIP soil mix is 1/3 coco, 1/3 compost soil, and 1/3 worm castings. Also a good amount of perlite. I think there's high soil oxygen with this mix. Good point on the top watering... I am now incorporating that when fertigating the SIP.
My SIP is also using 3 domes with lots of air vent holes.
Pest have never really been a problem in my grow.
No.
No. Plastic nursery pot, not cloth.
I have a sense that the susceptibility to bud rot and leaf mold isn't a brix issue, but we'll find out. These two plants are very healthy.
Gee64
Well-Known Member
OK there's no short answer so grab a coffee lol.
Yes, oxygen in the root zone. Sips quite often make LOS too wet. The carbon in the soil holds water and LOS tends to be a carbon heavy soil.
Oxygen and air share the same passages in soil so too much of one displaces the other.
Soil carbon and CO2, aka atmospheric carbon, are 2 very different things. Related for sure, but serve very different purposes.
Soil carbon is microbe food and a pre-cursor to humates, and atmospheric carbon is for photosynthesis.
Soil carbon is also the water reservoir in your mix. Soil carbon absorbs up to 4 times it's weight in water.
When you water LOS what you are really doing is recharging the water content of the carbon.
So 1/3 coco and 2/3 composted organic matter. That's a lot of organic matter, which is carbon heavy. Oxygen may me restricted.
A cheapo dollar store soil moisture probe will tell you. It's an eye opening experience, especially for Sippers using LOS. Most find they are too wet. By most I mean 100% so far.
Probe everywhere in the pot. There's a pretty good chance you will find dry spots. Microlife won't flourish in the dry spots. Check different depths too.
, top watering is key to taking the high calcium content in the EWC and rinsing it down into the pot below. Calcium is 2 things in LOS. It's a nutrient, but it's also a soil conditioner. It's double positive charge runs your cation exchange and also supplies soil tilth (fluffs the soil).
The extra space caused by the fluffing between soil particles is/are your air/water passages.
It's your main soil conditioner. It also keeps magnesium in check.
When Ca gets low, Mg gets high in it's ratio to Ca. Every excess Mg molecule in the ratio will lock onto one nitrogen molecule.
The nitrogen is still there, it's just unavailable to the plant, so your nitrogen levels go up in the LOS when Ca is low, even though the N is unavailable, and your carbon to nitrogen ratio is what dictates the physical health of the microbes and myco.
You need about a 20:1 C:N ratio to have microbes healthy enough to reproduce and at 30:1 they really get robust.
Calcium cycling in the soil via top watering is what keeps Mg and N from locking onto each other and causing nitrogen to get too high in the soil. That's why using CalMg quite often causes the nitrogen clawing in leaves.
Because the Mg to N attraction is electrical, Ca works on contact, releasing all excess N at once.
So low calcium can lead to both Mg and N getting locked out. That's why young plants quite often show MG deficiencies in there first 2 or 3 sets of leaves. It takes a few waterings for Ca to become homogenous throughout the soil and get Mg in check. It's also how CalMg greens up a plant. It makes N available again. If you suspect an N deficiency, check Ca 1st.
That's root air, not air in between soil particles that allows the microbes to breath, and as part of their soil process, to attach O2 molecules to the plant food they create.
If anything the plant requires isn't attached to an O2 molecule the plant can't recognize it as food and won't intake it.
That's how overwatering kills plants. It suffocates the aerobic microbes and the plant starts to starve.
It does leave the anaerobic microbes behind, alive and well. They generally promote disease.
That's an excellent indicator of adequate brix
.Ok, my bad. For some reason I thought it was cloth. I was wondering why the pot wasn't kicking the Sip's ass.
Plastic pots promote water roots, cloth pots promote feeder roots. Water roots are great for synthetics, feeders for LOS.
My 10gal cloth pots are completely filled with feeder roots. There are no long white roots circling anywhere, only fine feeder roots. Like a 10 gallon feather duster.
They likely are healthy, but now with a refractometer you will know for sure and be able to monitor calcium.
When checking brix it's important to do it late in the day. 10 hours into the day at least.
Plants build sugars all day long and at night they send all excess sugars, usually about half, down thru the roots to feed the microlife. You want to measure your daily maximums.
It's also very important to tell us the new swear words you invent trying to get juice from a leaf
. If you can't squeeze a drop out with your fingers, place the rolled up leaf between 2 quarters and squish it with channel locks or vice-grip pliers.
The microbes eat the sugars, which are very carbon dense, and breathe in O2 and out CO2. CO2 is heavier than air so it sits on or just above the soil surface waiting for a plant to eat it.
So soil carbon eventually becomes atmospheric CO2. The carbon cycle. Carbon sequestering.
The husk of the used soil carbon molecule becomes a humate after the microbes/fungii are done eating it. That carbon lattice humate is a large part of your cation exchange.
The exchange runs on electricity, and Ca is the main supplier of the electricity in the soil. That's why you always mix Ca 1st with synthetics. It sets the charge so other inputs don't lock onto each other.
I'm not saying you have any of these issues, it's just info on what carbon and calcium are capable of. They are both dual purpose. Food and conditioners.
With LOS, the state of your soil conditioning is intimately tied to the health of your plant so it's good to have an idea of what's actually going on down there.
Being where you are, high brix is critical for survival. Outdoors in your location, it's truly The Law of the Jungle, where only the strong survive.
I'm really enjoying your comparison, thanks for sharing it with us
.
Gee64
Well-Known Member
If you have or go get a soil moisture probe, there's 2 things you need to know.
One is that you need to scrub the entire probe with soap and a scrubber before using to get the machining grease off, and the other is to never leave it in the soil.
Stick it in, let it sit for 5 seconds or so for the needle to settle, then take your reading and remove it. If you accidentally leave it in the soil you will need to run some steel wool or emery cloth over it to get the scaling off. Scrub it again with soap after steel wooling it.
One is that you need to scrub the entire probe with soap and a scrubber before using to get the machining grease off, and the other is to never leave it in the soil.
Stick it in, let it sit for 5 seconds or so for the needle to settle, then take your reading and remove it. If you accidentally leave it in the soil you will need to run some steel wool or emery cloth over it to get the scaling off. Scrub it again with soap after steel wooling it.
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cbdhemp808
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I would say my soil mix is more on the soilless end of the spectrum of living organic soil (LOS), at a full 1/3 coco. Also the worm castings come from my own worm bins where I used coco for the medium. The other 1/3 is a compost soil, but it's a soil that's heavy on the minerals and light on the organic matter.
You lost me there. Yes, air permeates a good, lose soil, like what I'm using. This is how the oxygen in the air reaches the roots throughout the container. When I water, the water soaks in very quickly.
Are you saying that some other process is producing oxygen in the soil?
Yep, I knew that.
Is the carbon itself the food, or is it the decomposed organic matter that they are eating? Yes, I knew that plants breathe in CO2 and use it, and they release O2.
But coco is inert, so even though it's wicking up the water and holding it, that's not because of its carbon content, correct?
My SIP is really good at wicking up from the reservoir. I found the rez empty again today, but obviously there was still some water being held above the rez. I top-fertigated with 1 gal and got just a slight amount of runoff. The ferts were solution grade langbeinite (K, Mg, S), solution grade Ca, a bit of high-N liquid fert, and some soaked seabird guano (P) and kelp powder (Fe, etc.).
Again, the compost soil component of my mix is very light on the organic matter... it's mainly mineral soil.
If the plants were suffering, I'd be suspect of various things. But they are looking very good... good leaf color. The problem right now is lack of sunlight, due to tall vegetation around my greenhouse... I'm working on removing. They are getting some good morning light now, at least. The sun is at a low angle at this time of year. My veg house gets much better sun than the flower house.
I think I may have one of those lying around somewhere. BUT, what I do is weigh the container on my very accurate bathroom scale, if I'm unsure how much water is in the container.
When I top water, I'm sure water is getting everywhere in the container, because the mix is so porous. I dump most of a gallon of fert-water on the top, and it comes up to the rim of the bucket then sinks in in seconds.
Thanks... lots of info packed in there. I knew Ca was necessary in my fertigation, but didn't really know why, especially with regard to its relationship with Mg and N. I'm using a solution grade organic calcium carbonate powder...
Calcium is 2 things in LOS. It's a nutrient, but it's also a soil conditioner. It's double positive charge runs your cation exchange and also supplies soil tilth (fluffs the soil).
The extra space caused by the fluffing between soil particles is/are your air/water passages.
It's your main soil conditioner. It also keeps magnesium in check.
When Ca gets low, Mg gets high in it's ratio to Ca. Every excess Mg molecule in the ratio will lock onto one nitrogen molecule.
The nitrogen is still there, it's just unavailable to the plant, so your nitrogen levels go up in the LOS when Ca is low, even though the N is unavailable, and your carbon to nitrogen ratio is what dictates the physical health of the microbes and myco.
You need about a 20:1 C:N ratio to have microbes healthy enough to reproduce and at 30:1 they really get robust.
Calcium cycling in the soil via top watering is what keeps Mg and N from locking onto each other and causing nitrogen to get too high in the soil. That's why using CalMg quite often causes the nitrogen clawing in leaves.
Because the Mg to N attraction is electrical, Ca works on contact, releasing all excess N at once.
So low calcium can lead to both Mg and N getting locked out. That's why young plants quite often show MG deficiencies in there first 2 or 3 sets of leaves. It takes a few waterings for Ca to become homogenous throughout the soil and get Mg in check. It's also how CalMg greens up a plant. It makes N available again. If you suspect an N deficiency, check Ca 1st.
(it seems maybe the 38.0% is a typo... maybe they meant 3.8%)
They say use 1/2 tsp per 10 gal of soil. I'm using about 1/4 tsp in my fert water.
BTW, I'm fairly new to the fertigation requirements of the SIP... prior I was using 10 gal nursery pots... 10 gal of LOS. So, I wasn't fertigating as often. Now I feel like I need to be careful and thorough, otherwise the SIP plant won't be getting optimal nutrients.
Hmm, you lost me there again. All of the soil medium in the SIP has roots in it. The reservoir has the deep roots, and the rest has the feeder roots. My SIP has a large "R zone," which is what I call the area where roots can reach the saturated medium in the reservoir. That medium is special in my SIP, and is composed of 1/3 the overall mix, 1/3 coir, and 1/3 perlite.
I don't know about microbes inhabiting this R zone, which is an ebb and flow situation. But the soil above must have plenty of living microbes. Again, my soil is very porous. Air is permeating from the surface, but also down the fill tube into the air space of the domes, and in/out of the drain tube. I view this ambient air as subject to pressures that control it's flow into the soil. At the microscopic scale, the soil particles have lots of air space between them. So, I see the air in the domes, leaving through the side and top vent holes, as permeating the soil all around and above.
I wonder what would happen if I put a stopper on the fill tube and drain tube, after fertigating? As the reservoir level dropped over time, a slight vacuum would be created that would pull air from the surface.
OK, what you are talking about is roots absorbing nutrients w/ O2 attached to them. Roots are also doing respiration of O2, yes? I understand also that if the respiration is blocked, then nutrient metabolism is blocked... the plant is starved.
My 10 gal squat nursery pots did very well, but I was tired of mixing up so much soil by hand. I was using my custom LOS. I gave up on my DIY fabric pots, 15 gal, because they became clogged and I didn't want the hassle of unclogging them.
I'm looking forward to testing!
When checking brix it's important to do it late in the day. 10 hours into the day at least.
Plants build sugars all day long and at night they send all excess sugars, usually about half, down thru the roots to feed the microlife. You want to measure your daily maximums.
It's also very important to tell us the new swear words you invent trying to get juice from a leaf
...I'm gonna need to study this some.I view this particular mixture I'm using as sort of a hybrid coco/LOS. It's really 2/3 coco with lots of worm castings.
In a future mix, I might reduce the worm castings some, as well as the coco.
I've grown many plants here, in the same soil and same pots, and some will show more natural resistance to leaf mold and bud rot, while others will show less. I've flowered different strain/phenos at the same time, right next to each other, and one will succumb to bud rot and I'll lose the harvest, while another will show no bud rot to speak of. I'm guessing these differences are not due to brix... what do you think?
This is why I began my quest for mold resistance strains (see my signature), and began focusing on terpenes. Everyone knows that sativas are naturally more fungus/mold resistant, and I attribute this to high terpinolene and pine terpene content. So far I'm not a believer that the resistance is due to a sativa's more open bud structure. Like you say, the Law of the Jungle is eat or be eaten, and those botrytis spores don't care if a bud is more open or not.
I'm really enjoying your comparison, thanks for sharing it with us
Thanks for your excellent input, and I'm looking forward to the brix test!
Gee64
Well-Known Member
OK gotcha. When you said compost soil I immediately thought typical garden compost. My mix is very similar. 1/3 carbon, of which coco is my favorite carbon, 1/3 used soil, for innoculation, and 1/3 EWC, then all perlited to my liking.
Water moves in the spaces between soil particles, so does air, so if your soil is too wet air is being displaced from the passages. Microbes will drown. Roots will die.
No
Think compost here for a sec, browns and greens. When you get the browns to greens just right the microbes eat it all very quickly and it becomes useable compost. Microbe poop.
Coco, or any carbon source really, is a brown, so yes the microbes will eat it.
They only call it inert because it doesn't contain much in the way of nutrients so when it breaks down it doesn't end up over feeding anything, but it's a brown, aka a carbon source, and carbon is a soil microbes preferred food.
When you run out of uncomposted greens the process of cooking stops. The browns that composted are now humates and the ones that didn't compost because the greens got all used up, it remains as soil carbon. Microbes may or may not eat it, that's up to you and the plant really.
Inert is misleading. It means it won't supply meaningful amounts of nutrition, not that it won't decompose.
It's completely because of the carbon content. Well the holding part anyways. Capilliary action moves the water up and as it goes thru the coco it gets absorbed by the carbon.
What is the high N input?
Lack of light will lower brix very quickly. The high brix principle of growing is all based on the conditions of adequate light and minerals being available all the time.
Then manipulating the big 5, carbon, oxygen, calcium, phosphorus, and microbes/fungii into optimal levels for the stage of the grow causes higher rates of photosynthesis, creating excess sugars.
A great looking plant doesn't mean brix are high, but it definitely means they could be high. Synthetic plants look beautiful but pretty much all have low brix.
How many pounds of water in your pots creates proper soil moisture levels and how did you arrive at that weight being optimal?
Pretty much everyone I have suggested the moisture probe to has found dry spots, myself included, pretty much every grow. Sips less so because they tend to over saturate LOS, but when Azi tried it he found dry spots in his.
What that means is 38% of the product is Calcium, of which 96% of that 38% is calcium carbonate, and .5% is magnesium carbonate. Overall 98% of the product is calcium carbonate or something equivelent, giving it a score of 97/125 as a source of Oregon Lime. Lime score is basically the density of the lime, so you need more of a lower number or less of a higher Oregon Lime number. It's a lime density scale.I'm using a solution grade organic calcium carbonate powder...
(it seems maybe the 38.0% is a typo... maybe they meant 3.8%)
It depends on your idea of fertigation. If your intent is for the microbes to eat it and convert it to plant food then it's actually a tea, and if it is intended for the roots to consume it directly such as in hydroponics then it's fertigation.
If your intent is to hydroponically feed it directly into the root then it needs to be ph'ed. That process bypasses myco, so it's no longer a LOS grow and all the rules change.
If it's ebb and flow and your intent is to have the roots drink it directly, it needs to be ph'ed.
Let's talk soil tilth for a second. Soil particles will stack like plates in a cupboard. They stick together by magnetism. When they are all stacked nice and neat, thats compacted soil.
When you introduce calcium/magnesium in proper ratio, it creates the perfect electrical charge to inject electricity into those stacked plates changing the magnetics.
When you put two magnets close they attract but if you flip one over they repel. When you allow Ca and Mg to properly set the charge every 2nd plate reverses it's polarity and repels, so the stack is now a flat plate, then a plate standing on edge, then flat, then on edge... That's how Ca conditions soil. It fluffs it. Water and air now move into the hallways.
Now introduce carbon. As the water flows down the hallways from above via gravity, every carbon grabs some as it goes by and absorbs it. Roots will chase it to the carbon reservoir and actually grow into the carbon. Then as microbes eat the carbon it turns into humates and the root is already in position as the Cation Exchange fires up.
If any water stays in the hallways she's overwatered and O2 is restricted. She's not eating as much as she could be as a result.
In a perfect world you want all feeder roots and no water roots. Water roots are for trees. Synthetics are the exception, but in reality synthetics are a hack that exploits a backbdoor to the plant.
Trees use a different form of myco. These pics will explain. These are all feeder roots chasing water from carbon reservoirs. Myco guided them to the carbon. Myco can't live in over watered soil.
Wood is very dense carbon and roots will grow right thru it to exploit it as the microbes break it down (eat it).
Here is the above piece broken open. It was just a thin shell still looking like a chunk of wood. There's an entire rootball in there with a buttload of root surface area all linking into what is turning into humates. I left the stub of the incoming root on the left side.
Here is one almost fully consumed.
It would likely go skanky, anaerobic, but there's only one way to find out. I'll watch....... hint hint.......
Roots absorb oxygen directly, so yes they definitely respire. That's what your air gap is for. Microbes are beneficial aerobic microbes so being aerobic they need air too. Tilth creates passages for their air. Without tilth they will die or go dormant. Myco too. If rot respiration is blocked root rot will occur as the tissue dies. Anaerobes roll in to clean it up. It goes skanky. The plant itself won't eat anything that hasn't had a microbe attach an O2 molecule to it. The O2 molecule is what tells the plant that it's a food source.
Me too!
My hunch is you were doing everything right, brix were up, and then light levels dropped and the plant simply can't photosynthesize enough to create the needed sugars for exudates that myco uses to bribe microbes into eating what is needed by the plant.
Myco guides roots to grow to the food and once the root is in position the plant squirts exudates on the mineral it requires, and the microbes move in to eat the high carbon exudate but also consume the item that the root coated in sugar, and the root waits to consume the poop.
True story.... I grew up in a small coastal town on an Island that is renowned for good weed. It's a culture there much like Humbolt County back in the day.
All my buddies are synthetic weed growers so brix is a foreign term to them. I gave a buddy a clone of a really good commrrcial pheno I sifted out. It was growing in LOS.
Buddy being synthetic deals with mites non stop. It's just part of everyday life for him.
So I ask him how the clone is doing. He says that something was majorly wrong with it and he culled it. I asked what was wrong with it. He says he wasn't quite sure, and it looked healthy, but the bugs wouldn't go near it and if they won't touch it then it must be diseased so he culled it. I laughed out loud and said welcome to high brix.
So that may explain why some of your plants get attacked and others don't.
Sativas in general can handle the higher PPFD's of the equator, so they naturally produce higher brix making them appear more resistant. Simply put, sativas have the ability to photosynthesize more. More photosynthesis means more sugar. Sugar levels are directly linked to plant health. Healthy plants excel at Law of the Jungle. They actually ARE the jungle.
Here is a good video on brix and fungal disease.
Me too!
Please don't think that I'm insinuating that you aren't doing it right. I love your style. It's almost identical to mine except I rarely use a tea, but my mix is very similar.
This is all just to help you understand brix and escape the fungals.
If your brix are low then it's just a tweak for you as your organic basics are solid.
Mixing LOS and fertigation is tricky tho, so it complicates your journey.
LOS sets it's own PH in the humates at the colloidal level, and fertigation requires proper ph to be true fertigation. Otherwise it's not fertigation, it's feeding the microbes a liquid diet which doesn't work as well as a solid diet as excess moisture requires excess nitrogen, and pathogens excel in a high nitrogen environment.
That's why dampness propogates them, they know theres nitrogen in the dampness.
But that's all just info, let's see what the refractometer says, and more importantly.... What swears you invent
Gee64
Well-Known Member
By chance did the fungals show up shortly after a high nitrogen feed?
If you were at around 12-13 brix and you used a high nitro feed, that extra nitrogen will force the plant to drink more, thus watering brix down, as the water enters faster than sugars can be created, so brix crashes in hours. You could drop enough to become susceptible. That's a very real possibility.
If you were at around 12-13 brix and you used a high nitro feed, that extra nitrogen will force the plant to drink more, thus watering brix down, as the water enters faster than sugars can be created, so brix crashes in hours. You could drop enough to become susceptible. That's a very real possibility.
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cbdhemp808
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Fungals show up here by default. Which fungals show up appears to depend on the pheno I'm growing. I'm dealing with four different baddies: botrytis, septoria, downy mildew, and PM. Of course, botrytis is the worst 'cuz it can destroy the harvest. Septoria and DM are a given, although some phenos are more resistant. PM hardly ever shows up, but I had one pheno that was particularly susceptible. Very occasionally I'll have a root zone pathogen, and I think that's because of poor drainage in the pots I was growing in (prior to the recent transition to SIP).
As I mentioned, something else must be going on here beside brix, because plants in the same soil, same pot size, and same everything will show different resistance. In my quest for fungus/mold resistant strains, Humboldt Seed Company's HI-BISCUS was a bombshell—it was the first pheno I grew that showed zero bud rot. I grew it in a smallish pot, LOS, with a basic level of care but nothing special, just like all the plants I was growing at the time. It had high resin production and was very stinky at the time of harvest. It was a standout in this respect. So, this is what got me thinking that specific terpenes and high resin production (high total terpenes) were the key to bud rot resistance. It made total sense, because some terpenes are anti-fungal. Then I took a deep dive down that rabbit hole, and terpinolene and ocimene emerged as markers. I looked at a great deal of terpene profiles (lab test results) for well known strains. I found that when terpinolene is dominant, or prominent, it brings along with it the other pine terpenes. More recently, I found that ocimene sometimes takes the place of terpinolene in this respect. As an offshoot of this research, I realized that sativa and indica characteristics (effects) are also driven by the terpene profile, and that terpene profiles are like the fingerprints of the phenotypes—i.e. the phenos have their reliably unique and distinct terpene profiles. I realized that cannabis terpenes can be divided into the pine and the non-pine terpenes, with the pine ones being those that are found in species of pine trees. I associated the pine terpenes with sativa effects, and the non-pine terpenes with indica effects.
| Purple Kush (indica) | Super Lemon Haze (sativa) |
My environment here in tropical, wet, warm Hawaii is fungal city. I'm surrounded by jungle. My greenhouses are like spots of sunlight in a jungle canopy. I'm trying to keep my grow as simple and natural as possible, and that's why I'm looking for natural resistance, and relying on cloning to reproduce the golden phenos. So, if a pheno can produce a good harvest, without me needing to do anything special in terms of watering, feeding, testing, or treating for baddies, then it's a winner and I'll keep it. So far, my two winners are both from HSC—HI-BISCUS and Humboldt Dream. HI-BISCUS is a 50/50 with sativa effects, and Humboldt Dream is indica dominant with some degree of bud rot resistance, likely due to its linalool and pinene content. I have some others I'm keeping around until I can replace them with better strains/phenos. Right now my goals are high bud rot resistance in a THC indica, a THC sativa, and a CBD sativa and/or indica (type III). I've got a list of my next seeds to buy. I'm excited to try Northern Lights #5 as an indica with potentially high bud rot resistance.
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cbdhemp808
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I'm a recent convert from wet/dry cycle in pots to the SIP. The pot world is simple... you just water or fertigate to runoff, then wait until the pot weight becomes "light" before doing it again. With the SIP, in the case of this comparison grow, I measured the initial weight after planting to get a baseline number, and allowed for 1 qt. of water in the soil. The baseline was around 27 lb.
I think my last weight check (now obsolete) was around 30 lb, and I estimated that it represented about 1.3 qt of water (above baseline) in the soil above the reservoir (rez was actually empty). The soil volume there is about 3 gal, with about 1 gal in the "R zone" in the rez. Total volume of the soil is 4.2 gal.
After that measurement, I decided to top-fertigate and fill the reservoir. The weight was then about 39 lb.
I'll try to work up the pH of my fert water.
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cbdhemp808
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@Gee64, do you have any thoughts about why the SIP plant is not outperforming the nursery pot plant? Do you think this was a result of me having started feeding too late? At this point I'll be pleasantly surprised if the SIP plant produces noticeably bigger colas and more of them.
Gee64
Well-Known Member
I wouldn't start PH' ing anything yet. Stick with your plan until you moisture probe them and brix them. I would suspect that your fertigation is being eaten by microbes more than hydroponically by the plant. The refractometer and water probe is the best place to start.
I think SIPs are very cool but when it comes to LOS there's not much advantage that I can see because LOS doesn't like to be wet. It prefers evenly and consistently damp. Fully charged carbon with dry hallways for air. Calcium builds and maintains hallways and nature intended that to occur from the top down.
If your nursery pot was cloth you would be destroying the poor SIP right now.
A 10gal cloth pot full of featherduster roots is a massive engine with a huge intake of oxygen 360 degrees. A SIP airgap simply can't compete with that mathematically, as LOS requires a lot of O2. More than an air dome can provide.
Right now I have a 10gal cloth sack powering a sativa that is 5' wide x 5' wide x 6.5' tall in LOS. She's about a week from harvest. In hindsight I could have pushed her harder. Her engine is running really well.
She eats a lot of top dressing and even more EWC. To burn all that food you need air.
That's not me bragging, thats an example of how important O2 is in the soil for LOS. When the microbes are performing well you can't have an air restriction. An air restriction is a deficiency.
If you remove all moisture from a plant, 43% of the dry weight is oxygen. Over watering is the same as under oxygening.
So my guess is that because your in LOS, which requires more air than either pot can provide, they are tied more or less as both pots of LOS are equally restricted on oxygen.
Now if you were using synthetics or a proper organic hydroponic-purposed fertigation in the SIP and fed the pot the same solution, that would be a different story. The SIP would outrun the nursery pot as the extra water mixed with the synthetic nitrogen would veg it really hard.
Just going back to cloth pots may reduce your fungal problems. Oxygen is 1 of the 5 key components to brix and brix will battle fungals.
Refractometer and water probe 1st
Gee64
Well-Known Member
This is very cool. You could very well be onto something big here. If that's the case, one of the biggest bonuses of high brix growing is the high quality and quantity of secondary metabolites.Fungals show up here by default. Which fungals show up appears to depend on the pheno I'm growing. I'm dealing with four different baddies: botrytis, septoria, downy mildew, and PM. Of course, botrytis is the worst 'cuz it can destroy the harvest. Septoria and DM are a given, although some phenos are more resistant. PM hardly ever shows up, but I had one pheno that was particularly susceptible. Very occasionally I'll have a root zone pathogen, and I think that's because of poor drainage in the pots I was growing in (prior to the recent transition to SIP).
As I mentioned, something else must be going on here beside brix, because plants in the same soil, same pot size, and same everything will show different resistance. In my quest for fungus/mold resistant strains, Humboldt Seed Company's HI-BISCUS was a bombshell—it was the first pheno I grew that showed zero bud rot. I grew it in a smallish pot, LOS, with a basic level of care but nothing special, just like all the plants I was growing at the time. It had high resin production and was very stinky at the time of harvest. It was a standout in this respect. So, this is what got me thinking that specific terpenes and high resin production (high total terpenes) were the key to bud rot resistance. It made total sense, because some terpenes are anti-fungal. Then I took a deep dive down that rabbit hole, and terpinolene and ocimene emerged as markers. I looked at a great deal of terpene profiles (lab test results) for well known strains. I found that when terpinolene is dominant, or prominent, it brings along with it the other pine terpenes. More recently, I found that ocimene sometimes takes the place of terpinolene in this respect. As an offshoot of this research, I realized that sativa and indica characteristics (effects) are also driven by the terpene profile, and that terpene profiles are like the fingerprints of the phenotypes—i.e. the phenos have their reliably unique and distinct terpene profiles. I realized that cannabis terpenes can be divided into the pine and the non-pine terpenes, with the pine ones being those that are found in species of pine trees. I associated the pine terpenes with sativa effects, and the non-pine terpenes with indica effects.
Purple Kush (indica)
Super Lemon Haze (sativa)
My environment here in tropical, wet, warm Hawaii is fungal city. I'm surrounded by jungle. My greenhouses are like spots of sunlight in a jungle canopy. I'm trying to keep my grow as simple and natural as possible, and that's why I'm looking for natural resistance, and relying on cloning to reproduce the golden phenos. So, if a pheno can produce a good harvest, without me needing to do anything special in terms of watering, feeding, testing, or treating for baddies, then it's a winner and I'll keep it. So far, my two winners are both from HSC—HI-BISCUS and Humboldt Dream. HI-BISCUS is a 50/50 with sativa effects, and Humboldt Dream is indica dominant with some degree of bud rot resistance, likely due to its linalool and pinene content. I have some others I'm keeping around until I can replace them with better strains/phenos. Right now my goals are high bud rot resistance in a THC indica, a THC sativa, and a CBD sativa and/or indica (type III). I've got a list of my next seeds to buy. I'm excited to try Northern Lights #5 as an indica with potentially high bud rot resistance.
I gotta admit, I'm really hoping your brix levels suck. Then all you have to do is raise them and you will make huge progress in your quest, and for an experienced LOS grower raising brix is pretty easy. You just feed them a bit differently and use the refractometer to keep calcium optimal.
If you can increase light by pruning the jungle back you really should, that will help a lot and at a base level that will get magnified as you apply tweaks.
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- #137
cbdhemp808
Well-Known Member
Well, dang. This is starting to look like SIP is a soilless / hydro type affair, and I'm not so sure I'm willing to sign up for that. I definitely want to use LOS. I'm OK modifying my LOS to reduce carbon and increase air... more perlite? I'm OK pH'ing my fert water. I'm OK doing the brix testing. I'm probably not gonna do the water probe... depends on if I can find my probe.
I'm already letting the rez go empty. Perhaps I should wait a bit more before top fertigating, and skip the idea of actually filling the rez. In other words, I could view the rez as just a catcher of runoff, rather than a container for nutrient water... but then I'd basically be back to a nursery pot, albeit with some air ventilation in the root zone. So then, pH'ing the fert water so the water roots can absorb the ferts.
I can tell you that fert water from the rez is getting consumed and wicked up fairly quickly. When the rez is empty, the container is still heavy. So in that situation I'd say roughly 1/2 gal max is being held in the soil, so 1/2 gal held in about 3 gal of soil. The difference between my baseline weight 27 lb (incl. 1 qt water) and max weight 39 lb is 12 lb. This is about 1.4 gal of water, and including the baseline 1 qt = 1.65 gal. So, in the whole system, 1.65 gal in 4.2 gal soil (with about 1.5 qt water inside the domes). So, that's about 1.25 gal actually in the 4.2 gal of soil at max water capacity.
Note that once I started fertigating, the SIP plant ate up the N, because leaf color pretty much immediately changed from light to darker green. I also noticed that the red/purple petioles returned to green (Mg). My theory is that the SIP suffered more from the lack of early fertigation, precisely because water consumption had shut down, thus causing an anaerobic situation in the soil.
I sure hope I don't need to return to 10 gal pots! I just don't want to mix that much soil anymore, and I don't want to recycle soil anymore. If I can get a healthy plant in a 5 gal SIP that produces 8 oz of dried bud, I am happy with that. If it's the same result as a nursery pot of same size, then what's the point?! I have a feeling I'm gonna be doing another comparison grow!
EDIT: One thing I should add is this... when I went from 5/6/7 gal to 10 gal, I noticed a distinct increase in plant health in late flower and up to harvest time. I harvested a vigorous CBD pheno in 10 gal with little to no bud rot, while the same pheno grown in the smaller pot sizes would show more bud rot.
Gee64
Well-Known Member
Your LOS will see that fertigation as a tea and you won't need to ph it. I've actually often wondered why someone hasn't tried a SIP grow that fills the reservoir via top watering. It would give you the best of both worlds. If you do another comparison maybe you should do a SIP vs hard pot vs cloth pot vs SIP that gets it's res filled via topwatering
.Any idea how long it will be until your refractometer arrives?
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- #139
cbdhemp808
Well-Known Member
I need to re-read your other reply, but... are you saying it would feed the soil microbes, which would then feed the upper roots?
That's what I was originally thinking I'd do with the SIP... top fertigation. And the reservoir is just for catching/recycling the runoff. Would it hurt to pH the fert water, so that the deep roots can also make use of it?
It depends on the outcome of this comparison. Yeah, maybe top-watered SIP vs. cloth pot, same pheno, same soil, same amount of soil. This time, starting fertigation early in veg, like around 2 weeks in.If you do another comparison maybe you should do a SIP vs hard pot vs cloth pot vs SIP that gets it's res filled via topwatering
The Zon is saying Dec 11. Probably a bit sooner. Hasn't shipped yet.
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- #140
cbdhemp808
Well-Known Member
DAY 16 of flower
Both plants are still looking overall good, although both have more leaf spot now, both septoria and downy mildew. The branch that had stem rot is so far responding well to my surgery. The SIP rez level has dropped from 3.25" to 1.75", a drop of 1.5" in 3 days, or about 1/2 gal. The nursery POT should be ready for more fertigation tomorrow.
One thing that I realize now is that the SIP's soil/water environment is probably the same as the POT's soil/water environment. Here's why... when I top-water the POT, the water passes through quickly and the excess goes out the bottom. The soil has retained exactly the amount of water it can retain, and this is normal and good according to the wet/dry cycle (this is the beginning of the wet period). For the SIP, the water does the same thing, except the excess is retained in the reservoir. The soil above the reservoir is just as saturated as the POT's soil. Now, as the water is consumed in the SIP's soil, more is wicked up from the reservoir as needed. So, it seems there isn't too much water in the SIP's soil.
In the past 3 days, the SIP plant has consumed 1/2 gal of water, because in order to wick up 1/2 gal from the reservoir, it seems that an equal amount needs to be absorbed by the roots in the soil above the reservoir (and roots in the reservoir).
The difference with the SIP and POT is that the POT goes through a drying out phase, which allows more air to enter the soil. On the other hand, the SIP has an air source down in the lower root zone, which pokes up 4.5" into the soil.
I like this idea: top-fertigate the SIP to runoff, wait for the rez to empty, and then wait for the container to lighten up. Repeat. No need to check pH because the fert-water is wicked up into the soil/microbe zone. Meanwhile, the water roots can also drink up water.
Both plants are still looking overall good, although both have more leaf spot now, both septoria and downy mildew. The branch that had stem rot is so far responding well to my surgery. The SIP rez level has dropped from 3.25" to 1.75", a drop of 1.5" in 3 days, or about 1/2 gal. The nursery POT should be ready for more fertigation tomorrow.
***
One thing that I realize now is that the SIP's soil/water environment is probably the same as the POT's soil/water environment. Here's why... when I top-water the POT, the water passes through quickly and the excess goes out the bottom. The soil has retained exactly the amount of water it can retain, and this is normal and good according to the wet/dry cycle (this is the beginning of the wet period). For the SIP, the water does the same thing, except the excess is retained in the reservoir. The soil above the reservoir is just as saturated as the POT's soil. Now, as the water is consumed in the SIP's soil, more is wicked up from the reservoir as needed. So, it seems there isn't too much water in the SIP's soil.
In the past 3 days, the SIP plant has consumed 1/2 gal of water, because in order to wick up 1/2 gal from the reservoir, it seems that an equal amount needs to be absorbed by the roots in the soil above the reservoir (and roots in the reservoir).
The difference with the SIP and POT is that the POT goes through a drying out phase, which allows more air to enter the soil. On the other hand, the SIP has an air source down in the lower root zone, which pokes up 4.5" into the soil.
I like this idea: top-fertigate the SIP to runoff, wait for the rez to empty, and then wait for the container to lighten up. Repeat. No need to check pH because the fert-water is wicked up into the soil/microbe zone. Meanwhile, the water roots can also drink up water.