Delps 8 Hydro RDWC Gelato Autoflower 2021

[Delps8]

"Autoflowers feeds the same as a photo periods. It's a myth that they feed lighter just by being autos."
Guess I've never read any of the myths!

Why do you bring that up?

 

[Rexer]

"Autoflowers feeds the same as a photo periods. It's a myth that they feed lighter just by being autos."
Guess I've never read any of the myths!

Why do you bring that up?

I may have misunderstood the quote below-

I refer to documents as "Wonder Chart" and "Son of Wonder Chart" and I accept them as being valid. Wonder Chart has some "squish" in it because when conditions are falling, static, falling ("FSF") the author discusses TDS levels with two pivot points, one at 1.4 and one at 1.0. Based on those values, the guidance is to lower EC if current Ec is over 1.4 or to raise EC if current EC < 1.0. I've read the thread where the author published this information and there's no mention of autoflowers so I assume that it's based on growing photos so gives me little to work with.

 

[Delps8]

TBH, at the time my Grow Mentors (who helped bring my babies back from a potential grave) kept telling me “no, no calmag issue, dont add more” - but the issue persisted and for me it was really gut instinct that said they needed it. Within a week of when I added it the issue seemed to get only better from there.

Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do and go with your instinct.

Thanks!

I think I'm figuring out what's going on and adding a little extra CalMag will definitely be part of the "solution".

 

[Delps8]

I may have misunderstood the quote below-

No. You're spot on. I don't think I've ever read comments about PPM photos vs ruderalis.

My perception is based on reading grow journals for photos and autos plus having done a photo grow (a nutrient dark hole) vs the GG's which maxed out at 1.0. The bigger influence on my thinking goes to the genetic makeup of ruderalis that being that it's from Siberia = tundra = poor soil which means that ruderalis doesn't require many nutes and that would be a great gene to bring along to an indica or a sativa strain. Between those three sources, I pretty much expected autos would max out at, maybe, EC 1.5.

How high do you push autos in terms of EC?

Simlar topic - DLI. Right now, I'm in the low 30's for DLI. I'd like to go higher but, frankly, dealing with the Cal Mag issue has taken me off track on that.

 

[Delps8]

Rexer - I thought you'd mentioned defoliating autos. I'm not convinced about defoliation but it's something I'm going to try at some point. It would be really nice to see some research on that - paging Dr. Bugbee.

 

[cjsbabygirl313]

Between those three sources, I pretty much expected autos would max out at, maybe, EC 1.5.

I hadn't thought of that, but maybe you’re onto something. That Hubbabubbasmelloscope auto I ran which was the calmag pig maxed out at like 700 ppms towards the end of her grow - anything higher than that and she got nute burn and quit feeding.

 

[Delps8]

I hadn't thought of that, but maybe you’re onto something. That Hubbabubbasmelloscope auto I ran which was the calmag pig maxed out at like 700 ppms towards the end of her grow - anything higher than that and she got nute burn and quit feeding.

Well, that's a "data point". Confession - I'm a big data, checklist, SOP, person. I try to make those things the basis for my decision making but I also realize that the "unknown unknowns" can ruin your…life. And that's were experience helps us take all of the tangible, measurable stuff and overlay that with "this just doesn't look right". So, yeh, I'll go with "instinct".

Back to this - 700 is 1.4 EC and that's about a mid-range for photos, innit?

 

[cjsbabygirl313]

Well, that's a "data point". Confession - I'm a big data, checklist, SOP, person. I try to make those things the basis for my decision making but I also realize that the "unknown unknowns" can ruin your…life. And that's were experience helps us take all of the tangible, measurable stuff and overlay that with "this just doesn't look right". So, yeh, I'll go with "instinct".

Back to this - 700 is 1.4 EC and that's about a mid-range for photos, innit?

I think so - I’ve heard of some folks running their photos up in the 1200-1300 range! That other grow I did would have spontaneously combusted at that ppm level!

 

[Rexer]

No. You're spot on. I don't think I've ever read comments about PPM photos vs ruderalis.

My perception is based on reading grow journals for photos and autos plus having done a photo grow (a nutrient dark hole) vs the GG's which maxed out at 1.0. The bigger influence on my thinking goes to the genetic makeup of ruderalis that being that it's from Siberia = tundra = poor soil which means that ruderalis doesn't require many nutes and that would be a great gene to bring along to an indica or a sativa strain. Between those three sources, I pretty much expected autos would max out at, maybe, EC 1.5.

How high do you push autos in terms of EC?

Simlar topic - DLI. Right now, I'm in the low 30's for DLI. I'd like to go higher but, frankly, dealing with the Cal Mag issue has taken me off track on that.

I've read lots of journals- I try and read as many hydro journals as I can

I've had autos go as high as 1200ppm
Right now my three are feeding at roughly 900PPM.

how high do I take them? As high as they'll tolerate without nute burn. I ignore the fact that they're autos, and bump feed based solely on PPM rise/fall.

Rexer - I thought you'd mentioned defoliating autos. I'm not convinced about defoliation but it's something I'm going to try at some point. It would be really nice to see some research on that - paging Dr. Bugbee.

I'll leave you with words from a different grower, I agree with Multivortex. I had mentioned defoliating, but edited ot out to not distract from the current nute problems.

If you defoliate autos what day do you start doing it?

I have a small tent and I want to defoliate autos to be able to fit the number of plants I want in the tent and have good air flow on there. This is not really a should you defoliate or not post. The tent is small and with how much I lst the plants to keep the plants from being very tall the...

www.420magazine.com

 

[Delps8]

I've read lots of journals- I try and read as many hydro journals as I can

And I have no doubt it’s more than I have.

I've had autos go as high as 1200ppm
Right now my three are feeding at roughly 900PPM.

I’m surprised to hear that. One factor coming into play - confirmation bias. It’s quite possible that I’ve read enough to "get an understanding” and that wasn’t a broad enough sample.

2.4 EC is a lot of nutes - wow. When I finished my last grow, I had lot of nutes leftover and remember thinking that being economical on nutes would be another reason to grow autos instead of photos.

how high do I take them? As high as they'll tolerate without nute burn. I ignore the fact that they're autos, and bump feed based solely on PPM rise/fall.

Same here. I’ve started at 25% and then edged up. Speaking of edges…pH was 5.8 at 0730 and dropped to 5.6. I swapped in 2 gallons of RO and added 1.5 Up. The res is at 260/500 and 6.0

I'll leave you with words from a different grower, I agree with Multivortex. I had mentioned defoliating, but edited ot out to not distract from the current nute problems.

If you defoliate autos what day do you start doing it?

I have a small tent and I want to defoliate autos to be able to fit the number of plants I want in the tent and have good air flow on there. This is not really a should you defoliate or not post. The tent is small and with how much I lst the plants to keep the plants from being very tall the...

www.420magazine.com

Yeh, I think I read through that and need to revisit it - it’s well written and it makes a powerful argument. The eternal question - what was your control? Seeing that we may be years away from having that type of data, there is a lot of anecdotal information and, eventually, when you add enough anecdotes, it gets really close to data.
And the other side of the argument is - why not try it and see if it works for me?

OK, back to work.

Thanks for the info and the link.

 

[Delps8]

It’s been a battle trying to get things on even keep. Over the course of a couple of days, I dropped 17 gallons of nutes for RO, getting down to 190/500 on the Bluelab monitor. I know the Bluelab is reading high so the PPM was, realistically, 150 - 160 PPM. That’s less PPM than my tap water.

Same cycle - pH drops, I add Up, pH drops, I add Up, rinse, lather. repeat. Quick trip to nowhere.

A pattern that I saw was that as PPM drop, pH dropped more quickly. That’s a pattern I think I saw, I should say. Figuring I had nothing to lose - it was either pix the pH or toss out that plants - I swapped in 4 gallons of 100% nutes. PPM went to 340 and 6.0. That was at 1405 and the entry in my grow journal -"Set a timer for 3:15 to watch the pH drop. "

The subsequent entry from my grow journal:
"Fuck me. pH went up.
Set another timer. "

pH had risen from 6.0 to 6.1 and stayed there from 1515 to 1630. Prior to that, pH was dropping 0.1 units every 60 - 70 minutes.

At that point I added another 11 ml of CM and then use Down to get to 5.8.

I do not want to muck with this res - pH appears to be stable which means that nutes are being taken up. I’m assuming that these Gelatos are somehow related to the plants that @cjsbabygirl313 had to drench with CM so I’ve added quite a bit of CM. But (there’s always a “but”, eh?) that’s giving me Ca + Mg and, checking out the various sites re. deficiencies, I believe that I’m looking at an Mg deficiency not necessarily a Ca deficiency. Another item of interest is that more than one site has stated that a CM issue manifests 3 - 6 weeks after the deficiency actually occurs. That means that I could now be paying for not using enough CM a few weeks back and, yup, that checks out - I was using seedling strength when the plants had already moved into veg.

I can see new symptoms of Mg deficiency. I trimmed away the affected leaves yesterday and there are new sites so I’m not out of the woods yet. Despite my having added CM, what about adding Mg via Epsom salts?

It seems pretty simple - standard dosage is 2 tbps for each 5 liters of water. Any thoughts about that?

Another approach is a foliar spray. Never used a foliar spray but I’m willing to give it a shot if that’s a better approach than adding to the res.

 

[West Hippie]

It’s been a battle trying to get things on even keep. Over the course of a couple of days, I dropped 17 gallons of nutes for RO, getting down to 190/500 on the Bluelab monitor. I know the Bluelab is reading high so the PPM was, realistically, 150 - 160 PPM. That’s less PPM than my tap water.

Same cycle - pH drops, I add Up, pH drops, I add Up, rinse, lather. repeat. Quick trip to nowhere.

A pattern that I saw was that as PPM drop, pH dropped more quickly. That’s a pattern I think I saw, I should say. Figuring I had nothing to lose - it was either pix the pH or toss out that plants - I swapped in 4 gallons of 100% nutes. PPM went to 340 and 6.0. That was at 1405 and the entry in my grow journal -"Set a timer for 3:15 to watch the pH drop. "

The subsequent entry from my grow journal:
"Fuck me. pH went up.
Set another timer. "

pH had risen from 6.0 to 6.1 and stayed there from 1515 to 1630. Prior to that, pH was dropping 0.1 units every 60 - 70 minutes.

At that point I added another 11 ml of CM and then use Down to get to 5.8.

I do not want to muck with this res - pH appears to be stable which means that nutes are being taken up. I’m assuming that these Gelatos are somehow related to the plants that @cjsbabygirl313 had to drench with CM so I’ve added quite a bit of CM. But (there’s always a “but”, eh?) that’s giving me Ca + Mg and, checking out the various sites re. deficiencies, I believe that I’m looking at an Mg deficiency not necessarily a Ca deficiency. Another item of interest is that more than one site has stated that a CM issue manifests 3 - 6 weeks after the deficiency actually occurs. That means that I could now be paying for not using enough CM a few weeks back and, yup, that checks out - I was using seedling strength when the plants had already moved into veg.

I can see new symptoms of Mg deficiency. I trimmed away the affected leaves yesterday and there are new sites so I’m not out of the woods yet. Despite my having added CM, what about adding Mg via Epsom salts?

It seems pretty simple - standard dosage is 2 tbps for each 5 liters of water. Any thoughts about that?

Another approach is a foliar spray. Never used a foliar spray but I’m willing to give it a shot if that’s a better approach than adding to the res.

I know of one that can chime in on that
@MochaBud uses it . Let’s see if he’s online.

 

[Delps8]

I've read lots of journals- I try and read as many hydro journals as I can

I've had autos go as high as 1200ppm
Right now my three are feeding at roughly 900PPM.

how high do I take them? As high as they'll tolerate without nute burn. I ignore the fact that they're autos, and bump feed based solely on PPM rise/fall.

I'll leave you with words from a different grower, I agree with Multivortex. I had mentioned defoliating, but edited ot out to not distract from the current nute problems.

If you defoliate autos what day do you start doing it?

I have a small tent and I want to defoliate autos to be able to fit the number of plants I want in the tent and have good air flow on there. This is not really a should you defoliate or not post. The tent is small and with how much I lst the plants to keep the plants from being very tall the...

www.420magazine.com

Rexer:
I need to check out your journal again. Between work and trying to keep my plants alive, I haven't had a lot of time for leisure reading.

The magic number for PPM…well, the PPM "where they're not dead yet" turned out to be 350. The mixture of nutes is a dogs' breakfast because of the amount of CalMag but, for the first time three days my pH isn't dropping. I was going to swap the res today, thinking of doing a 315/500 PPM but, when it came time to start working on that I realized that I could get to that level of nutes by just swapping in my 4 gallon bucket that's at 100% strength. It worked out really well, so far. Instead of falling 0.1 units every 70 minutes or so, it's been stable for a few hours now. I've added more CalMag and am looking at this as a Mag deficiency, hence the question about Epsom salts.

Just checked the Bluelab-cam and TDS dropped from 360/500 to 350/500. I'm not ready to set off fireworks yet but that delta goes along with the pH not taking a dive and…what a relief.

Back to defol.

I know I need to "do something" with Winnie. She's not a weed plant, she's a weed bush so wether it's cutting away leaves to increase yield or just get air moving through there, I need to get rid of the foliage.

How do you figure out what to remove? How about removing nodes 1 and 2, harking back to what Multivortex wrote? I realize that he said to do that when you top the plant but better late than never.

 

[Delps8]

I think it's spelled "scheiss".
pH was 5.8 at 2000 and just now (2140) dropped to 5.8. Call it 1.5 hours = I need to add some Up.
At least I have a starting point for a res change in the morning but it really hurts to see pH still dropping. I'm hoping that a "regular" set of nutes will work out.

 

[Rexer]

Rexer:
I need to check out your journal again. Between work and trying to keep my plants alive, I haven't had a lot of time for leisure reading.

The magic number for PPM…well, the PPM "where they're not dead yet" turned out to be 350. The mixture of nutes is a dogs' breakfast because of the amount of CalMag but, for the first time three days my pH isn't dropping. I was going to swap the res today, thinking of doing a 315/500 PPM but, when it came time to start working on that I realized that I could get to that level of nutes by just swapping in my 4 gallon bucket that's at 100% strength. It worked out really well, so far. Instead of falling 0.1 units every 70 minutes or so, it's been stable for a few hours now. I've added more CalMag and am looking at this as a Mag deficiency, hence the question about Epsom salts.

Just checked the Bluelab-cam and TDS dropped from 360/500 to 350/500. I'm not ready to set off fireworks yet but that delta goes along with the pH not taking a dive and…what a relief.

Back to defol.

I know I need to "do something" with Winnie. She's not a weed plant, she's a weed bush so wether it's cutting away leaves to increase yield or just get air moving through there, I need to get rid of the foliage.

How do you figure out what to remove? How about removing nodes 1 and 2, harking back to what Multivortex wrote? I realize that he said to do that when you top the plant but better late than never.

A lot of it is experience for knowing what to snip, if you are defoliating. Snip inside only, leaving outter leaves alone.
Snip off only what's needed- and aside from one or two leaves a day- your fine, from your recent photos they don't look too dense to require a big defoliation.

 

[Delps8]

A lot of it is experience for knowing what to snip, if you are defoliating. Snip inside only, leaving outter leaves alone.
Snip off only what's needed- and aside from one or two leaves a day- your fine, from your recent photos they don't look too dense to require a big defoliation.

Sounds like a good approach. I’ve defoled (Good Lord don’t change that “o” to an “i”) previous grow but that was cleaning up what blocks air flow, mainly.

One Plant Doc (a PhD) in a YouTube video said during an interview that her recommendation was to remove leaves that weren’t getting > 200µmols. The interviewer became animated - wow, someone with “the secret” - and she backpedalled faster than Lance Armstrong because she was shilling for a company that where she’s a consultant and said that it was good to do that so that the clients’ special mix of herbs and spices would be optimized. So much for sciencing. :-(

"they don't look too dense to require a big defoliation.” - only Winnie. I’m thinking of calling in Indiana Jones to deal with that one.

 

[Rexer]

Sounds like a good approach. I’ve defoled (Good Lord don’t change that “o” to an “i”) previous grow but that was cleaning up what blocks air flow, mainly.

One Plant Doc (a PhD) in a YouTube video said during an interview that her recommendation was to remove leaves that weren’t getting > 200µmols. The interviewer became animated - wow, someone with “the secret” - and she backpedalled faster than Lance Armstrong because she was shilling for a company that where she’s a consultant and said that it was good to do that so that the clients’ special mix of herbs and spices would be optimized. So much for sciencing. :-(

"they don't look too dense to require a big defoliation.” - only Winnie. I’m thinking of calling in Indiana Jones to deal with that one.

I don't like doing defoliating except at two points, during veg to help keep the veg hormones raging. And again towards end of flower to open her up.

Those leaves act as a emergency reservoir. The plant will pull nutes, and shed the leaves as she needs.

The more leaves the higher the RH however, and that's why I have a household sized dehumidifier inside my tent.

Everyone has their own methods and opinions on the subject. I've followed Multivortexs approach as his breakdown clicked with what I was seeing. Doesn't mean it's right.

And that's the hard part of being a grower- deciphering which methods will work the best for you.

 

[Delps8]

Let us hope the hurly burly is done.

After yesterday’s refresh - I just didn’t have time to swap the res - I did a 28% strength res today. I might kill plants but I can hit my nute strength targets pretty well! I wanted 323 and at 320 (which means it was somewhere between 300 and 340). pH was 5.9 - the horror! - so I ended up adding 1 ml Down and the res is dipping to 310 and steady at 5.8.

More leaves were impacted prior to the res swap but very few compared to previous days so maybe flooding the zone with CalMag has done the trick. I’m still open to suggestions re. Epsom salts, BTW.

My GG grow was a “Maytag repairman” level of excitement until the very end when Aphids and the Thrips to in the tent. Right now, I just watching the cam that’s on the Bluelab and hoping I’ll get to harvest this grow instead of burying it.

Now that I’ve got some time to breathe, thanks everyone who offered ideas, asked good questions, or had suggestions. It’s great to have a group of people willing to give me the benefit of their expertise. It’s not only a great way for me to learn but the pointed questions force me to think about the issue and stop me from stepping on my thumb.

This res swap pretty much puts this res on the final approach - I can’t afford to spend much more time dealing with this. I bill by the hour so, if the clock isn’t running, I’m not earning a living. The good news is, there’s a fresh batch of nutes, heavy on the CM, and, with the bumped up levels of CM in the previous res, the intensity of the issue (if that’s the right word) seems to have significantly diminished. This res is at 8 ml/gallon (3-5 recommended) and I’ve got Epsom salts standing by is I need to do triage. The Bluelab is still switching between 310 and 320 but it’s definitely spend more time on 310. That’s good news. I can certainly use some.

 

[cjsbabygirl313]

Sounds like you’re dialing in to the ladies’ needs! Glad to hear the increase in CalMag seems to be helping !

 

[Delps8]

A lot of it is experience for knowing what to snip, if you are defoliating. Snip inside only, leaving outter leaves alone.
Snip off only what's needed- and aside from one or two leaves a day- your fine, from your recent photos they don't look too dense to require a big defoliation.

Sounds like a good approach. I’ve defoled previous grows - clean up what blocks air flow, mainly.

One Plant Doc (a PhD) in a YouTube video said during an interview that her recommendation was to remove leaves that weren’t getting > 200µmols. The interviewer became animated - wow, someone with “the secret” - and she backpedalled faster than Lance Armstrong because she was shilling for a company that where she’s a consultant and said that it was good to do that so that the clients’ special mix of herbs and spices would be optimized. So much for sciencing. :-(

"they don't look too dense to require a big defoliation.” - only Winnie. I’m thinking of calling in Indiana Jones to deal with that one.