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

[Emilya Green]

Thank you for the compliments dear friends; you give me confidence that we will soon get the word out on these trigger lights. As far as using my influence with the vendors, I am still very new to the reviewing job and right now I just need to learn how to do that well. I have no influence right now, but I am sure that as time goes on, I will get the chance to provide some input to the light manufacturers, and maybe we can influence a few of them to give us additional controls on deep red and UV so that we can experiment with how to best apply them. For now, we are on our own.

I have seen a few solutions on the web to get the far red into my 2nd bloom room, but the cost is still too high on a lot of the quick solutions that are showing on the big box stores, and I suspect the quality. For my immediate situation, I am not going to "need" the deep red in the Bloom Room in a couple of weeks, and I can easily de-install it from the middle of the MEGA and using velcro, re-install it in the other room for the stretch period of those plants. So far I am leaning toward buying another of the same strips that I have here since the price was right, quality is high, and the results have been documented.

Here are the Purple Kush this evening, on day 17 of bloom. We have had some cool nights here in Missouri lately, and I have let some of this air into the room overnight. As a result, the purple is starting to show up on some of the leaves. One plant is showing it more than the others, and I suspect that I am seeing at least a couple of different phenotypes in the room after seeing 3 different responses to the local climate control.

I have also been playing with some of the settings on my camera in my review work, and I think you might also be able to see an increase in quality of the journal pictures lately. Here are some pretty bud, plant and leaf pictures from the room, right after watering and checking them over for any problems before bedtime. Please scroll over each picture for a mini description.

 

[Emsrighthand]

Looking beautiful

 

[GratefulBud]

Looking great! Love the purple!

 

[CBDMed]

Wow, your plants always look so good.

 

[Emilya Green]

Today I built up 3 more SIP tubs, to be used in Veg Room #1 with new seedlings. Contrary to everything I have ever advised growers of this weed to do, I am going to start the next 6 in their final 7 gallon cloth containers, and they will be bottom watered from day #1. This time I have used 17 gallon containers, and am using the lid as the false floor above the air gap. I am still using 6" drain pipes to create the water rez and provide the strength to hold up the two 7 gallon containers. It will be tight in these tubs, but the idea is to lift the bags out of these tubs at some point to go to individual 17 gallon tubs with one single wick in the middle. I didn't take pictures as I worked with my jig saw out in the back yard, but I will take a few shots as I begin to fill these with soil and some pre-watered 7 gallon containers of Ocean Forest with a top layer of Happy Frog for the seedlings to start in. @DYNOMYCO will be mixed in generously.

 

[Azimuth]

This time I have used 17 gallon containers, and am using the lid as the false floor above the air gap. I am still using 6" drain pipes to create the water rez and provide the strength to hold up the two 7 gallon containers.

The 6" drain pipe should be strong enough that you don't even need the false floor. Just pack your soil down around the drain pipe and set the pots on top of that soil.

The soil will provide a broader wicking surface to keep a broader array of roots with direct access to water.

I got a better root structure in a side-by-side test with one I did that way vs. the one I did that was two nested buckets with a central connector pot.

And I agree that the 'direct to final pot' is the way to go with these SIPs. There is no advantage that I can see to up-potting since you're not trying to build a rootball so any time and plant resources spent on building a traditional root structure is essentially wasted. These pots promote a structure of mostly all feeder roots, so might as well have the plant get started on those right away.

I find there is a 2-3 week period of adjustment time for the plant whether you plant the thing directly or transplant it from somewhere else, so I like to get that ransition period out of the way right at the beginning.

 

[Emilya Green]

420 Product Review: PlantChek

Plantchek is here to give you the answers that you need. With Plantchek you can have your results immediately

www.420magazine.com

My PlantChek review has just been published!

 

[Emilya Green]

Tonight I started some more @CoffeeShopSeeds. In the cups of water are three Critical Kush feminized and three O Gelato feminized. They are on the heating pad set to 75°. After 24 hours in the water they will be transferred to paper towels on a warm plate. This gives me added incentive to get my three new sip containers ready to go in veg room one so we can start these seedlings in their final containers.

Starting new seeds.jpg

• Emilya Green
• Oct 13, 2022
• coffee shop seeds

O gelato and critical Kush

 

[StoneOtter]

420 Product Review: PlantChek

Plantchek is here to give you the answers that you need. With Plantchek you can have your results immediately

www.420magazine.com

My PlantChek review has just been published!

Thanks for the @Plantcheck review Em! I have a bunch of kits to try in a few weeks! It's so affordable now I have to check more harvests!

 

[Emilya Green]

All of the seed sunk after a little shake and this evening I will be moving the seeds to the paper towel stage. Today my goal is to get the 3 new SIP tubs built, with 7gal containers full of new soil starting to wick up moisture from below. My plan is to create a solo cup sized divot in new Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil, with plenty of @DYNOMYCO thrown in, with some Happy Frog filling in the hole to start the seedling in that divot. If I get everything built today, the soil should be moist and ready for the seedlings in a couple of days.

 

[ReservoirDog]

The 6" drain pipe should be strong enough that you don't even need the false floor. Just pack your soil down around the drain pipe and set the pots on top of that soil.

She knows what she's doin' Avi. She's placing the sections vertically as structural supports because you create a much larger reservoir this way. She's using soft pots as her planters so the idea is to max the rez size. By using the tote's lid, cut-down so it will make a false floor, she can, depending on tote size and her preference, cut one or two 4" holes (or 6" for 6" inch perf pipe) in the false floor for slightly longer pieces of perf. pipe to fit through. Cut an inch longer than the support sections under the floor, these ones are the wicking feet. I've found you don't need to cover the wicking-foot perf-pipe so long as you make a nice flat cut on the bottom.

Please make us some kind of construction pics Emilya. Don't know I buy this, 'I was outside working', excuse!

Good job on jumping in with the wee seedlings. You really want to trip the plant's genetic memory regarding moisture gradients right away. So if you can give it one from day one, even by bottom watering a solo cup, or planting straight into the SIP, then your plant will progress much faster. By all means water it in well on day one, but, let nature take over from there. The only thing, in this case, that creating a big tight root ball does, is to create a need to untie it and change completely the root morphology, which of course will slow the plant tremendously, at an already precarious stage of its life.

Having gallons and gallons of irrigation on board is a huge win, don't care what people say, for me this is another huuuuuge advantage to SIPs and I wouldn't grow in a SIP that didn't offer me from 3 days to 3 weeks of irrigation depending on plant stage and size. Yeah, they grow better and faster, (I mean, have you ever seen your plants NOT praying to the light since you started SIPs? I don't think I have) which is great, but now I spend the time really tuning my canopy, working on new projects, checking for nits, and spending time with my genetic stock (moms) which otherwise you can bet would be getting ignored. And to think, some people used to assume that SIPs were just for lazy people! NO way, SIP growers are more productive, not less!

 

[Emilya Green]

I have not yet walked into any of my SIP rooms and not seen the plants fervently praying. I don't yet know how to explain it, but the plants seem to love this. And its not just bottom feeding doing it... I have seen wick and bottom watering systems, but never have I seen growth like this. It has to be the constant contact with water and air at the root zone doing it. As you have seen, I am converting my entire grow operation over to sip. I am even going SIP with my vegetable and fruit garden outside next spring, repurposing my 27g tubs that are a bit too large for my grow rooms, and by using the lids, turning those 3 nested tubs into 6 outdoor planters.

Sorry, but I got busy as I was constructing and forgot totally about talking pictures this time. Time got away from me today too and the big lights all went off on me a few minutes ago, forcing me to do a couple of flash shots and a red light shot of the other room. Never fear, I still have 6 more of these 17g totes ready to build and I can do a step by step at that time.

Besides, my pictures are just like RD's pictures when he showed his tub with the 6" drain pipes sitting vertical, except this time instead of nesting another tub inside the bottom one, I cut the edges off of the lids so that they could fit in as a false floor.

You can see in this picture, 2x 7 gallon bags that are not yet filled. Below them you can see a layer of soil that has been placed on this false floor on top of some barrier cloth. It took approximately 5gal of used soil to fill up this floor to the level of the wick feet, sitting about an inch and a half above the floor. This creates a stable base for the bags and allows for a wider moisture transfer area under the 2x 50 square inch wick feet. These 17g tubs barely hold the 7 gallon grow bags so they are not going to be round; they are more of an oval shape after being stuffed into this SIP.

The rez is approximately 23" x 18" and the water depth is 5", so that gives me about 6 gallons in the rez. In this version of the Emmie SIPs, I have included a fill tube. I have also purchased a cheap aquarium pump and a 5' hose so that I can fill a 5 gallon bucket with water, add any extras that I need to it, and then quickly pump it into the rez. This will also let me more accurately track how much I am adding to these systems, half buckets and full buckets at a time. My silly little 3 cup watering pitchers are getting a long deserved break.

This evening, or maybe first thing tomorrow, the goal is to get 2 more bags of WET Ocean Forest up the stairs to fill up these grow bags. My heavens they are heavy! I will then get 5 gallons of water in each of the reservoirs, and then I am going to top water the containers with enough water to run off into the wicks to start the process from the top. Since the OF was wet from the store, I know I will have a gnat problem, so I am going to immediately hit them with a strong systemic insecticide to immediately and thoroughly eliminate that problem for 5 weeks, as I top water tonight.

The 2 sets of 3 @CoffeeShopSeeds have been moved to thrice (or more) rinsed paper towels, in baggies on a plate, and on a 75° heating pad. All 6 of the seeds came out of the water dunk looking active and viable. We should have some roots in a day or two and I will be able to plant them immediately into the SIPs. The plan is still to make a divot in the already wicking Ocean Forest soil big enough to give the seedling a good start, like a good big handful of soil, and then plant the seedling in its own nest of @DYNOMYCO charged Happy Frog soil, right in the middle of the planters. For now, that room will continue to be powered by my @Mars Hydro SP-3000, with its 3x5' footprint, a perfect match for these 3 SIPs sitting in a row.

 

[Emilya Green]

I went back upstairs with the last heavy bag of wet FFOF to finish up the job, but before I started on the last two containers, I peeled back the covers on that build so you can see most of what is going on. I have brushed the soil to the front so you can see the back wick foot. This foot is made from the same rubber drain pipe that you see displayed on the top, except this is one has two more ribs above the false floor, about an inch and a half above. The display pipe is one of the 6 inch variety, and 9 of them are stacked vertically below the floor to provide vertical strength and create a 5 inch reservoir of water. The two wick feet were enclosed with half a nylon stocking to keep the soil in there where it belongs, and not in the rez. You can see the layer of plant barrier also keeping the soil on the topside, despite several one inch holes having been drilled into that false floor, for the roots to be able to find their way directly into the water. You can see several spots where I have applied duct tape to hold the plant barrier in place.

After I filled up all of the 7 gallon containers, I used my nifty new pump and swiftly pumped a 5 gallon bucket of water into each rez. Then I mixed up a bucket of insecticide, and using my little watering pitcher again, I top watered that evil concoction evenly amongst all of the planters. That will take care of the infamous Fox Farm Fungus Gnats. Each container took slightly less than a gallon from the top, and this also helped settle the firmly packed soil into the containers. As this water runs off into the wick foot, it will complete the connection with the water rising up from below.

Let the wicking begin! Now we just wait for the seedlings, and transplanting them will be a breeze when they are ready.

 

[Emilya Green]

I have not yet walked into any of my SIP rooms and not seen the plants fervently praying.

I now amend this statement. While I was working in the next room, I opened the door to the former Veg Room #2, and sure enough, none of the clones under the big light were praying. They were instead, sleeping hard, the light having been off for a couple of hours by then. None of the plants were reaching up, and all were in the typical droopy sleepy positions.

I am going to have to put a time lapse on this to see how dramatic the movement of these plants is in response to the day/night cycle.

 

[Azimuth]

She knows what she's doin' Avi. She's placing the sections vertically as structural supports because you create a much larger reservoir this way. She's using soft pots as her planters so the idea is to max the rez size. By using the tote's lid, cut-down so it will make a false floor, she can, depending on tote size and her preference, cut one or two 4" holes (or 6" for 6" inch perf pipe) in the false floor for slightly longer pieces of perf. pipe to fit through. Cut an inch longer than the support sections under the floor, these ones are the wicking feet. I've found you don't need to cover the wicking-foot perf-pipe so long as you make a nice flat cut on the bottom.

Well, she's cut the standing pipes so there is a 5" water level, which is the exact same thing as laying the 6" pipes horizontally.

Laying the pipes flat, you only have to cap the ends and you're essentially done. I use the top of a 1L take out container trimmed to size that snaps in between the ridges of the 4" pipe I used in mine. Cover with sand or soil packed well and that's it. Much simpler and easier to build, essentially the same reservoir capacity, and more even wicking of water. No trying to make clean cuts all the same height on nine sections of pipe, no wicking feet, no false floor, no nylons, and only one cut required per section of pipe (so two cuts).

Maybe if you wanted to make the water reservoir deeper than 5" the standing pipes would be needed but I've not found that necessary.

Its all the same concept and build them any way you want, but in my side-by-side experiment I found the wicking feet to be less productive than a broader wicking surface.

 

[Emilya Green]

Well, she's cut the standing pipes so there is a 5" water level, which is the exact same thing as laying the 6" pipes horizontally.

Laying the pipes flat, you only have to cap the ends and you're essentially done. I use the top of a 1L take out container trimmed to size that snaps in between the ridges of the 4" pipe I used in mine. Cover with sand or soil packed well and that's it. Much simpler and easier to build, essentially the same reservoir capacity, and more even wicking of water. No trying to make clean cuts all the same height on nine sections of pipe, no wicking feet, no false floor, no nylons, and only one cut required per section of pipe (so two cuts).

Maybe if you wanted to make the water reservoir deeper than 5" the standing pipes would be needed but I've not found that necessary.

Its all the same concept and build them any way you want, but in my side-by-side experiment I found the wicking feet to be less productive than a broader wicking surface.

That is the method being used in my 5g bucket SIPs, and they are working brilliantly! When I convert my tubs over to outdoor garden use, I will most likely use horizontal 6" pipes, because I don't look forward to cutting all of those risers for 6 new tubs. I won't use grow bags out there either and will just let the entire container wick up from the soil packed down below between the pipes.

 

[Emilya Green]

I just checked on the seedlings in the paper towels. One set is starting to throw out tails, the other set is cracking and showing white, getting ready to start exploring. I made sure to lightly pack them back into the paper towels so that they can get a little air. The new SIP tubs look good, and there is not a fungus gnat in sight.

 

[ReservoirDog]

I keep my genetic stock in the attic where skylights and a 100k lux corn cob-style shop LED (has 360 deg light direction) provide the photon flux. Prob is I have to go up a ladder to tend them and with my severe vertigo that's not safe some days.

I had bought a kiddy pool, and was going to transplant eavery mom plant into a 3 gal softpot and sit the softpot atop a 4-6 inch section of 4 inch perf-pipe that was sitting in the pool. The pool would be filled with a few inches of water with some ferts in it and I'd cover the whole thing to prevent light hitting the fertigation and creating Swamp Thiinng in my attic.

It was that 360 degree light that really led to the kiddy pool idea, because the plants all need to be in a circle. Well staring at the ceiling in bed last night I realized it was gonna be too big a hassple covering that expanse,a kiddy pool 7 ft. diameter. So, I can up with something better. Much, much better... Still using 3 gallon softpots and still using the 4 inch perf pipe, both of which I'd already bought.

Check it: These have 10 gallon irrigation/fertigation on board. Gonna need some light proofing, but I am really loving this.

 

[ReservoirDog]

I went back upstairs with the last heavy bag of wet FFOF to finish up the job, but before I started on the last two containers, I peeled back the covers on that build so you can see most of what is going on. I have brushed the soil to the front so you can see the back wick foot. This foot is made from the same rubber drain pipe that you see displayed on the top, except this is one has two more ribs above the false floor, about an inch and a half above. The display pipe is one of the 6 inch variety, and 9 of them are stacked vertically below the floor to provide vertical strength and create a 5 inch reservoir of water. The two wick feet were enclosed with half a nylon stocking to keep the soil in there where it belongs, and not in the rez. You can see the layer of plant barrier also keeping the soil on the topside, despite several one inch holes having been drilled into that false floor, for the roots to be able to find their way directly into the water. You can see several spots where I have applied duct tape to hold the plant barrier in place.

After I filled up all of the 7 gallon containers, I used my nifty new pump and swiftly pumped a 5 gallon bucket of water into each rez. Then I mixed up a bucket of insecticide, and using my little watering pitcher again, I top watered that evil concoction evenly amongst all of the planters. That will take care of the infamous Fox Farm Fungus Gnats. Each container took slightly less than a gallon from the top, and this also helped settle the firmly packed soil into the containers. As this water runs off into the wick foot, it will complete the connection with the water rising up from below.

Let the wicking begin! Now we just wait for the seedlings, and transplanting them will be a breeze when they are ready.

Emily, did you skip the overflow hole/pipe on these? I think they are important for the oxygenation of the reservoir. I believe a shorter fill tube will help advance that same goal.

The Queen of Container-420 has abandoned her ways and taken up my own 'arcane' grow system.

I'm struck dumb...

Nah! Ha, ha you wish!

PS, be sure not to over-fertilize. In the sense that, nothing ever gets washed down and out of the pot, so if it doesn't get used it sits around trying to mess with your pH. I've taken on a program of a mid-grow preventative flush because I'm using salt nutes (as well as the org. amendments mixed-in at start). You could always do a runoff test now and then - well after the plant's established itself. That's what I do, PPMs and pH. Regardless the results I flush with pH'd, room temp water, a week before flip.(Veggy flushes just get the hose) I also top dress a layer of worm castings at last flush, attempting to rinse all that wormy goodness deep into the soil so the plant has some food, and microbes for company, before I refill the rez with MC2pt. This way I can also keep running moderate salt nutes (below 1 EC) after the flush. It's all trial and error, but hopefully, some of the errors are other people's!

 

[Emilya Green]

Emily, did you skip the overflow hole/pipe on these? I think they are important for the oxygenation of the reservoir. I believe a shorter fill tube will help advance that same goal.

I will be shortening the fill tubes... not sure what I was thinking, but these are redonculous. And yes, I have the drainage holes at the 5" mark, right in the front of the tubs.