CoffeeShopSeeds Sponsored Grow: Emmie’s Huge 1 Month Interval Constant Harvest

[Emilya Green]

In the Bloom Room we are now 6 days into the transition and I think at least on one of the varieties I can call today day one of flower and the other strain is almost there too.

The recent watering and feeding has done well to bring the green back into the plants and the constant spraying of SNS 203 is keeping the mold at bay. The plants seem to have taken hold of the reservoir and I can see good water usage out of the tank. The leaf indication I've been watching, where the leaves are above horizontal or not, now shows the entire plant responding in the manner we would expect in a sip.

I'm doing an experiment to see if I can get more nutrient into a couple of the yellowing plants by dissolving the geoflora into water that I am going to top feed into those plants. The theory is that they will get a massive inoculation of both raw nutrients and microbes in that top feeding and that this will be what they need. For now I'm not considering doing this as a normal practice but only as a boost when it is obvious something extra is needed.

So here are some brand new budlets along with a longer look at the entire room.

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg Room #2 is stable and the plants appear to be fine and if not already responding to the sips they are very happy about their recent feeding and watering from the top. I do expect a week or two of stall where I will continue to train them and then massive growth after that. I'm not interested in vegging these plants very long and I would estimate that we will be moving to bloom within a month and after these are done we will be concluding the 2022 grows as well as this journal.

In the middle of the five headbands you see my 5 gallon sip with candy dawg really going for it. She will likely be going to bloom along with her roommates within a month. I'm going for quality instead of quantity this time and then a brief break in between grows as I wait for winter to settle down.

 

[Emilya Green]

I forgot to mention stretch in the bloom room... The picture above showing the light was supposed to remind me.

Sometimes at this point we are seeing an inch of growth every night, but not here, because once again the far red trigger lights are doing their job. I know I'm going to get some stretch and I fully expect to have to supercrop a few of these plants but I don't expect to have any excessive stretch on most of the plants because of the red trigger light.

 

[Emilya Green]

Today the Bloom Room didn't need a lot of attention. The electric dipstick showed and inch and a half of water in the rez of the biggest plant, and almost 3 inches in one of the smaller ones.

The attempt at a massive jolt in feeding was followed through with today, on the front right plant in the room. She got this mix, along with its sludge at the bottom, in one 3 cup application of water from the top. I will come back around virtual sunset to see if I see a difference in color already, and then again tomorrow. If nothing else, it is another 50% increase in the feed from 3 days ago, and another mini watering to help water it in. If we are seeing a feed problem with SIP and GeoFlora, this should make a difference.

The mold problem that I have been fighting is just about dead and it is clear that the SNS-203 being sprayed practically every time I am in the room, has stopped it in its tracks. Here are two spots on the same plant where leaves that were totally gonners, have fought back to be productive once again, thanks to the natural and organic power of @Sierra Natural Science products.

This next shot is to show how well the plants have done in settling down into the SIPS. Note the good lift deep down into the plant now... these girls are starting to really suck up the water.

Then of course, we have the new buds just starting to be formed.

This shot is to show how much stretch room that I still have available to me. Thanks to the Far Red trigger lights hanging in the middle of the @Cultiuana CT-720, we are so far experiencing very little stretch.

One last thing...
I have been being lazy as of late, giving you pictures from my cell phone instead of my real camera. This has not allowed me to adjust the color balance, and the plants have looked a lot more yellow than they actually are. All the shots today were made using my real camera, and white balanced.

 

[Emilya Green]

Candy Dawg is really starting to use a large amount of water now... apparently she has adjusted to the SIP completely, finally. I am out of room for further LST training, but I do keep snipping new nodes as they rise up until they start alternating. We are at the final snip on several of the branches now and we will just let her continue to build until time to send the room to Bloom. I brought the big Nextlight MEGA down to around 18" from the canopy and am now flooding these late vegging plants with almost 59k LUX of full spectrum light.

 

[Emilya Green]

The 818 Headbands are still only 3 days in the SIPs and they seemed a bit droopy today as a result of it.

After spending an hour or so working on the LST training of these plants, to give them something to really be droopy about, I realized something important. Poking and re-poking my training hoops into the soil clearly showed the reason for this droop and the stalling out we are all seeing in the beginning of transplanting into a SIP. The soil was completely dry! I could feel how dry and loose it was as I poked my long hoops down to the bottom of the containers. No wonder the plants were drooping! I gave a little bit of a topwatering to the plants after seeing this, just a light sprinkling of one 3 cup pitcher to get some water (and nutrients) into the top spreader root system. I am betting that instead of torturing our plants while we wait for them to send roots down into the moisture gradient, that if we give them light top waterings instead, just for the top spreader roots, that we can eliminate the dreaded 2 week stall out that many of us have seen. I will of course let you know the results of this experiment.

I mentioned further LST training now that I have all the extra room in the new larger 7g containers. I have waited 3 days since transplanting, just so as to not come at the plants with everything at once, but today, they all got some severe training reinforcement. There are no secrets any longer in this room... all the plants have been spread out for all to see and leaves that were at the bottom or in the way of buds that can develop have been removed. Since the plants were so dry, this massive spreading was easily done without breaking or tearing. They were watered (just that little bit from the top) after this torture session.

 

[Trala]

Sip-sational babe!

 

[Gee64]

so capillary action isn't working in your pot? Or is the res empty?

 

[Emilya Green]

so capillary action isn't working in your pot? Or is the res empty?

The plants were transplanted 4 days ago from 1g to 7g, and then set onto the wick feet. It takes some time to adjust to the new SIPs. We have the choice to passively wait for the connection to establish itself between rez and roots or help it along with top watering in the beginning and not let the plants dry out and stall.

 

[Emilya Green]

All the plants are at day 4 since their official last feeding. At a total age of 94 days, the OG and CK are in their second day of bloom and really starting to draw hard from the SIPs. One of the plants drew up almost a gallon in the last 24 hours. Part of this has to do with the big change that I made to the room. Following my own advice as to how to deal with mold, I increased the air movement in the room, and as it turns out, in a big way. Dad came up with an old box fan from the 1940's that really moves a lot of air! They knew how to make things that last back in those days, and this 30 lb monster is as sturdy as can be. It turns out that by tripling the air movement, the plants have increased their activity and water use by a lot too. The rez'es that went 12 days last time, have gone 7 this time, and I probably need to water tomorrow.

The plant that got the extra liquified feed yesterday looks fine... maybe a little greener, but I really am not noticing a huge difference. She did stretch a little last night, so maybe that was the effect.

The headbands are on their 4th day since uppotting to the SIPs and looking much better today after watering a little from the top yesterday. I repeated that today, with twice as much as yesterday from the top and I am hoping that this time we make a good solid connection with the wick. They are 56 days old today.

The Candy Dawg is 69 days old today and really sucking up the water now. Today I gave her twice as much as I expected to, before runoff. She is really starting to widen her trunk and branches, widening out overall. She is going to be a monster.

Please scroll over these pictures for a description of what I am showing you in each.

 

[Emilya Green]

As of last night, the stretch was still at acceptable levels, or in other words, we are not yet into the light. I can still gain another 4 inches if I have to, but so far, everything is good. Here is the reason for that... Deep and Far red light. If you haven't seen it work yet, plants do not hardly cast shadows in this red light, since it goes right through the leaves!

I am still spraying SNS 203 to defeat the mold problem, and this along with the new fan seems to be getting things back in check. The greenness of the room goes up noticeably every day, so something is working... but still not sure just what is doing the trick. The rez's needed filling as a couple of them only had a half a gallon or so in the tank, and along with that I gave them a bit of a topwatering too. One plant in the back corner has a little colony of spider mites on it, and that area got sprayed really well with the SNS 203. If this doesnt get them, I will mix up a batch of SNS 217, and that will surely kill them dead with a few sprayings. After this run I am going to do a deep bleach cleaning of the room to find their nest and get rid of it.





Here is Veg Room #2. The plants in there did not get watering from the top last night because they looked so perky I was tempted to conclude that they had found the link to the rez already. Maybe not. I will see what they look like this afternoon, but I think these waterings from the top early on may have eliminated the stalling out. Time will tell.

 

[Emilya Green]

Candy Dawg has been going insane. She is visibly growing by the day and she is pulling water faster than ever before. Today I had to use more water than I have ever given to this 5g SIP... I didn't even know that the rez could hold 9 cups! She took 3 full watering pitchers, when I have only ever given 2. Wow... I can no longer let her go 2 days between fills.

She was drooping a little when I took this picture, but I bet by morning she will be lifting up strongly. She is almost halfway through the 2 week feeding schedule, and looks to be very healthy. I am planning to give her one more dose of VEG, and halfway through that two weeks, I will flip her to 12/12. She is 71 days old today, and two weeks from the flip.

 

[Emilya Green]

Today we are 6 days away from the transplant into the SIPs in their 7 gallon bags. The common advice when moving to SIP seemed to be to not mess with the water gradient by watering from the top, and just wait for the plant to "adjust" to the new system.

I have decided to be proactive regarding this, and have refused to let my cloth bags dry out to the point that the plant goes into protective mode and stalls out. Soil completely dry in the upper 2/3 of the container, where the old rootball sits, seemed to me to be a big problem. So I have been watering enough to keep that old rootball going. I have not watered to runoff, but I have made sure they are watered.

The plants have gone from yellowing and stunned looking, to what we see today. I see happy, strongly growing and leaf lifting plants... definitely not stalling out. They are using water from the rez too, just not a lot of it yet. I suspect that as the roots continue to expand out into the 7 gallon containers and more strongly link with the water coming from the bottom, that we will continue to see stronger and stronger growth, and avoid the stalling out period. How did we get here? We started the SIP with a very strong 1 gallon rootball.

So here they are. They are growing so much that I needed to train some of them a little more today. I think I might be on to something important here.

 

[Emilya Green]

Lastly, the Bloom Room! We are in the 4th day of Bloom and the 6th day since last feeding. Every day the plants all look a little greener, so the strategy of watering from the top once a week appears to be working. We are also about 11 days from the flip, and stretch is usually during that first two weeks from the flip, so we are almost done with the official 14 days of stretch.

The tall O. Gelatos seem to have done their stretching during their extended late VEG (remember that they are 96 days old today) and maybe a lot of their stretch was already worked out of them. The Critical Kush didn't do that, and have been stretching during the traditional time during the beginning of the bloom cycle. So the numbers are crazy weird in that the Gelatos have maybe stretched 5% since the flip and the Kush have stretched around 40% so far. This is all very good news, as I was expecting those super tall Gelatos to try to become 8' tall in a 6' 6" room and really worried about what was going to happen. Thanks to the Far and Deep Red trigger lights, stretch has been well managed. This run is turning out to be a real convincer as far as the effectiveness of those lights.

Here is how much room is left before I have to modify the hangers a bit... and it looks like we are going to make it without having to supercrop.

The spidermites seem to be staying in that one area in the back left of the room. They are not able to get a good hold on this plant because of the constant use of @Sierra Natural Science SNS 209 being used with every watering. This natural and organic product puts Rosemary inside of each cell of my plants, making them taste bad and actually toxic to bugs that feed on them. So the mites are moving slowly, and allowing me to try to fight them with SNS 203, a combination of Rosemary and Clove extracts, and a bit more toxic to bugs and molds. I am not going to mess with them much longer though, they are too dangerous and I can't let them spread. If I see signs of them still surviving tomorrow, I will be mixing up some SNS 217, an almost 10% mixture of Rosemary and Clove that the bugs can not survive. Flat out, they are already as good as dead.

So tonight, I am going to celebrate the increasing health of my Bloom Room and the strength of my plants. Tomorrow my shipment will arrive, and I am going to further increase the vitality of my plants, and the demise of the spidermites who like dry conditions, with the addition of a humidifier to the room. This dry winter air is hurting me in more than one way, so this weekend we are going to get back to an acceptable VPD and make some spidermites uncomfortably damp.

Onward and upward... with each day things get a little bit better.

 

[Emilya Green]

Sierra Natural Science, 217 Spider Mite Control Review

SNS-217 is my go-to weapon against Broad Mites, Russet Mites and Spider Mites. They are extremely hard to eradicate.

www.420magazine.com

 

[Emilya Green]

I have here today a series of photos to illustrate a point.

In the first example, I give you my 5gallon SIP, growing Candy Dawg. She is 74 days old and has been SIPing since being transplanted from the solo cup. She is quite large and has taken well to the SIP. These days she is really sucking up water, using about a quart and a half every day. She is also getting top watered once a week so as to water her Geoflora Nutrients in with these waterings.

This morning, she was a bit droopy and showed signs of deficiencies starting to set in, so she got a slightly overdue weekly watering from the top. This brought in more needed nutrients, but more significantly, as the top spreader roots sucked up this water, I noticed within an hour an immediate lifting of the leaves indicating that those top roots were still active and working just in case there might be a morning rain. In this established SIP, I still noticed a very dramatic increase in activity due to the morning top watering.

Here is my before picture

And here is an hour after the morning sprinkle. The leaves are rising... and she obviously appreciated the attention.

More dramatically is what happens with the newly transplanted and started in the SIP plants, our 818 Headbands. This morning they were obviously unhappy, even though I can see that water is being used out of the rez, and although it is a slow flow here at first, I can see that the water is wicking.

While the plants have sent a few roots down into the more damp regions at the bottom of the container, they are still not able to draw as much water as they would like from the SIP. Without intervention they would stay alive, but they would not be able to thrive until a more solid connection is made down below. We would see this as a stall.

So I have made an effort to keep the original rootball damp as we adjust to SIPing, by top watering when it is obvious that they needed it. Today, it was obvious. Here are the before pictures:

An hour after watering from the top, just one 3 cup pitcher worth, here is the result. Vigor immediately returns.

I don't believe that I am upsetting the moisture gradient by doing this. Wicking and gravity will take care of what I have done. In the meantime, the water passes through the top spreader roots and nourishes the plants, keeping growth strongly advancing. I am not getting a stall.


Over in the Bloom Room, we are at day 7 of bloom and day 14 since the flip. According to the numbers, stretch is mostly over. Deep and Far Red trigger lights have saved the day and these huge plants are going to be OK. The added fan action and spraying SNS 203 seems to have stopped the mold from progressing. The spray, the SNS 209 in the water, and now the added humidity in the room seems to have stopped the spider mites. I will keep spraying every couple of days though until I am sure, and tomorrow I am going to move tubs around and wade deep into the jungle to carefully look at all the plants from every angle. If I have to break out the SNS 217 spider mite control I will, but I would prefer to beat them with the 203 and just being smarter than they are. All in all, the room keeps getting greener by the day. We are at day 9 of the feeding cycle, so next Friday they will get their second dose of GeoFlora BLOOM.

 

[Emilya Green]

I am going to continue on this theme today, mainly because of the facepalm memes from my dear friend @ReservoirDog on the main SIP thread in response to me trying to share what I am doing here, with the group. I can only assume (since there was no real explanation) that the concern is over my insistence in watering from the top in my new SIPs while they get established. Your lack of comments and my desire not to threadjack that thread, has brought the discussion here to my thread, where I enjoy a good debate. Please, let's discuss this, without silly memes that might be making comments you hadn't intended.

The last several SIPs that I transplanted to, following advice, I indeed did wait without top watering until the plants figured things out and they started to use the water from down below. In each of those cases I experienced a 2-3 week stagnation as this process sorted itself out. I am sorry to throw contrary thought into the SIP discussion, but I am of the belief that not only is a 2-3 day stagnation counter productive to my grow schedule, but I don't think it is good for the plant either.

No matter what I do, that soil is still wicking. A little bit of top watering doesn't stop the roots from having to adapt to the overly wet bottom of the container so despite what I am doing, the plant does adapt to the SIP and the moisture gradient established in the container. Once enough specialty roots have been developed down below, other than the fact that I am using top fed nutrients, I would no longer need to water from the top to keep the plant vitality where I want it. But, until those specialized roots are formed, I see nothing wrong with using what is already there (the old rootball) to keep the plant properly watered and quickly growing.

Using this strategy, for the last 10 days since transplanting to 7g containers and putting them in a SIP, I have kept my plants vigorously growing without any discernible stalling out period. Not only are they growing up top so much so that I need to keep up with my training, but they are also growing new roots. I submit that they are growing new roots a lot quicker using this keep the plant healthy strategy than they would by letting the plant stall and then in desperation sending out new roots to the bottom water source.

Does this totally and permanently screw with the moisture gradient and the plant's ability to adjust to SIP? Apparently not. I invite any of you to this discussion... please tell me exactly why what I am doing is wrong or in any way harmful. The way I look at it, I didn't just lose 2 weeks in a stalling out period as I did in my previous SIPs. My plants have been steadily growing and widening out and getting ready to be sent to bloom, and when they get fed the next time, it will be their last 2 week feeding of the VEG formula. Following the old SIP strategy, my stalled out plants would be barely bigger than when I transplanted them 10 days ago, and this time would have to have been added to the VEG period while I waited on the plants to get big enough to go to flower.

This constant top watering isn't a permanent strategy, and I have only watered 2 times from the top in addition to what I would normally have done with the top feed and then a week later to wash it in again. These two extra waterings to keep the original rootball active and happy at this critical point right after transplanting seems to have made a huge difference. As the lower roots continue to grab into the SIP, the need for top watering (except for my nutes) goes away. For 3 days now they have gone without top watering, and they are looking great. I don't think I will need to top water again until 4 days from now when they get fed again and then after that I will let the SIP take care of things, only watering from the top once a week, and only enough to wash the nutrients down into the soil.

Here are each of the plants, just as happy as they can be. I had to trim several buds this afternoon to continue with the training, and a couple of days ago, I had to spread out the training hooks a little more. They actually have not stopped growing since the transplant... no shock, lots of awe and no stall.

 

[Emilya Green]

Here is Candy Dawg at age 75 days in her 5 gallon SIP. She is one week and 4 days away from the flip. She will be fed again in 4 days, her last @GeoFlora Nutrients VEG. When she is one week into the flip and presumably at the first day of Bloom, she will then get her first @GeoFlora Nutrients BLOOM.

She is using water at a record rate and I really need to top off the rez every day, because there is not big enough tank to keep her going for 2 days. I suspect that this water usage will continue to increase as we move into Bloom and this big girl will need topping off a couple of times a day.

 

[Gee64]

By natures design, both the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle have needed allowances for both carbon and nitrogen inputs through the soil.

Its called composting, and its essential to the carbon and nitrogen cycles.

Plants want to be fed from the surface through rain and watered from an aquifer through a taproot.

They can get calcium from either. Roots absorb it directly.

If you obey the laws of the carbon and nitrogen cycles you will have healthier plants and soil.

So I'm with Em on this one.

 

[ReservoirDog]

I am going to continue on this theme today, mainly because of the facepalm memes from my dear friend @ReservoirDog on the main SIP thread in response to me trying to share what I am doing here, with the group. I can only assume (since there was no real explanation) that the concern is over my insistence in watering from the top in my new SIPs while they get established. Your lack of comments and my desire not to threadjack that thread, has brought the discussion here to my thread, where I enjoy a good debate. Please, let's discuss this, without silly memes that might be making comments you hadn't intended.

The last several SIPs that I transplanted to, following advice, I indeed did wait without top watering until the plants figured things out and they started to use the water from down below. In each of those cases I experienced a 2-3 week stagnation as this process sorted itself out. I am sorry to throw contrary thought into the SIP discussion, but I am of the belief that not only is a 2-3 day stagnation counter productive to my grow schedule, but I don't think it is good for the plant either.

No matter what I do, that soil is still wicking. A little bit of top watering doesn't stop the roots from having to adapt to the overly wet bottom of the container so despite what I am doing, the plant does adapt to the SIP and the moisture gradient established in the container. Once enough specialty roots have been developed down below, other than the fact that I am using top fed nutrients, I would no longer need to water from the top to keep the plant vitality where I want it. But, until those specialized roots are formed, I see nothing wrong with using what is already there (the old rootball) to keep the plant properly watered and quickly growing.

Using this strategy, for the last 10 days since transplanting to 7g containers and putting them in a SIP, I have kept my plants vigorously growing without any discernible stalling out period. Not only are they growing up top so much so that I need to keep up with my training, but they are also growing new roots. I submit that they are growing new roots a lot quicker using this keep the plant healthy strategy than they would by letting the plant stall and then in desperation sending out new roots to the bottom water source.

Does this totally and permanently screw with the moisture gradient and the plant's ability to adjust to SIP? Apparently not. I invite any of you to this discussion... please tell me exactly why what I am doing is wrong or in any way harmful. The way I look at it, I didn't just lose 2 weeks in a stalling out period as I did in my previous SIPs. My plants have been steadily growing and widening out and getting ready to be sent to bloom, and when they get fed the next time, it will be their last 2 week feeding of the VEG formula. Following the old SIP strategy, my stalled out plants would be barely bigger than when I transplanted them 10 days ago, and this time would have to have been added to the VEG period while I waited on the plants to get big enough to go to flower.

This constant top watering isn't a permanent strategy, and I have only watered 2 times from the top in addition to what I would normally have done with the top feed and then a week later to wash it in again. These two extra waterings to keep the original rootball active and happy at this critical point right after transplanting seems to have made a huge difference. As the lower roots continue to grab into the SIP, the need for top watering (except for my nutes) goes away. For 3 days now they have gone without top watering, and they are looking great. I don't think I will need to top water again until 4 days from now when they get fed again and then after that I will let the SIP take care of things, only watering from the top once a week, and only enough to wash the nutrients down into the soil.

Here are each of the plants, just as happy as they can be. I had to trim several buds this afternoon to continue with the training, and a couple of days ago, I had to spread out the training hooks a little more. They actually have not stopped growing since the transplant... no shock, lots of awe and no stall.

I'm limited by time currently so I want to take up the more important, ''ínterpersonal" aspects here, Emily, and put a pin in the technical discussion if you'll permit me. It is important to me that you hear from me that I meant those memes humorously and respectfully, I didn't mean to create an air of unknowing or angst. I laughed aloud when I read your initial entry because I had just been writing an article on how we all bring our personal expertise to new projects and so I saw you, the traditional container gardening expert, applying her traditional container gardening expertise, to a new problem and it really, really struck a funny bone because I'm always arguing a fresh approach. My "humourous" response was cartoon characters facepalming - the international symbol for "people gonna be how people gonna be". In that context then, I, and others, use cartoon facepalming as accepted internet-speak for agreeing to disagree. Maybe a bit too 'edgy' in this instance... but we underdogs gotta find one somewhere and maybe reached too far. I merely have a different solution to the problem, one I feel doesn't.. er... ''water down'' the sub-irrigation benefit or introduce potential dangers like top watering. Most importantly, I meant no disrespect.