Delps8 DWC Original Glue

[Hafta]

Just an observation .....

I noticed, in several of your photos, that your DIY lid is curling up around the edges. This may make controlling humidity challenging. I know the original lid fit tightly and no water vapor could escape around the edges of the res. You might try some small C-clamps to improve the seal.

Plants are looking good!!

 

[Delps8]

Just an observation .....

I noticed, in several of your photos, that your DIY lid is curling up around the edges. This may make controlling humidity challenging. I know the original lid fit tightly and no water vapor could escape around the edges of the res. You might try some small C-clamps to improve the seal.

Plants are looking good!!

Heh, thanks for the idea.

I'd noticed that it was bowing but decided to leave it for this grow. It's a little frustrating to see that but it is my own doing.

RE. the original lid - agreed. It "snaps" in place and provides a moisture seal but it also provides structural support for the res. I've noticed that the res is bowing in the back.

I might be able to change res tops. It's an issue of being able to get the root bal out through the net pot holes. I'd like to avoid damage to the roots but my understanding is that they will grow back quickly. The other issue is that the base of the plant causes the net pot to bulge so I might have to "excavate" some of the hydroton. Shit.

Temps hit 85 so I opened the back garage door for a but and it's at 79° and 55%.

 

[Hafta]

Pretty expensive res, I would try to save it before it gets misshaped beyond repair. You might be able to catch it before the major bulge.

 

[Delps8]

Day 40.

 

[Delps8]

Pretty expensive res, I would try to save it before it gets misshaped beyond repair. You might be able to catch it before the major bulge.

No question, they're $$. I'll take a look this weekend.

 

[Delps8]

Day 40

The photo above is from the tent cam. After some defol yesterday AM, I waited a day and shut out the lights at 1130 today. The speed of recovery//growth rate has been really something.

Picture taken 20241028 0810

Picture taken 20241028 2117 (13 hours later)

Picture taken 20241029 1051 (13 hours later)

There's noticeable change in the second and third photos. Really something.

Temps in the tent were a little higher than previously, reading 85 ambient. I've let it get the high because the leaf temperature offset has been running -6 and -7. My IR thermometer is a few years old and didn't have an adjustable emissivity value so I ordered new one and the offsets are the same. That means that 85 in the tent is only high 70's on the canopy so I'm good to go.

Added some nutes to bring PPM to 620/500. Doser ran more than expected at 7.2 yesterday, 3.0 as of this AM when I put the lights out, and, since 1124 it's added 5ml of down so the N is "leaving the building". I expect to see PPM drop tomorrow.

Light is the big driver and I've been feeding them well. Just for the heck of it, I took readings with flaps open and then closed. Any drop values with the flaps closed shows how inaccurate it is to take readings manually (and hastily).

They're both getting really good light and are responding very well. Per the photos above, the foliage filled in very quickly after I defoliated. All in all, I'm at 1kµmol and it's the unevenness of the canopy and the falloff in light output that I'll need to address.

The AC Infinity heater has been running today, with the C69 set to keep the temp at 77°. I've set it to level 4/10 and it's used 1.52 kWh which is about 60¢ of electricity here in the People's Republic. Worst case is $40 per month, add in the 330 watts for the light and that's another $50±. Oh, don't forget the $1.18 it costs for nutes when I do a new res.

The little Pohl Schmitt dehu has been running but it's not up to the job. It's rated at 10oz/day so I found one that's pretty much the same size that will extract 34oz/day. That will be here "tomorrow by 10 PM" so I'll that will be in the tent on Thursday AM.

Lights kick on at 2330. I'll set an alarm for zero dark and will see how temperatures are doing and then check things out after I get up in the AM.

 

[Delps8]

Day 41.

I think I f'd up. The change in the plants with 12 hours of darkness was quite something and it makes me think that 24/0 in veg is not optimal. Cannabis doesn't need darkness to do its "dark cycle" processing but that doesn't neceassarily mean that cannabis benefits, overall, from not being in darkness for some time every day.

Bugbee was asked about 24/0, 20/4, 18/6 in veg and his reply was "plans could use a little rest". While I've gotten good results from 24/0 previously, I think it's worth it to back off to 20/4. What's been in the back of my mind is that these plants seem to me to be smaller than they should be. They've got a huge amount of foliage but they're just "wee little f'ers".

The other factor that's influenced me was that my first few grows were done using the Mars SP3000 in veg. The Mars is a white LED do it's got a fair amount of red vs the Growcraft veg light with huge amounts of blue photons.

First day of flower and things went pretty well. VPD dropped when the light went out (as it did just now) but the heater kicked in and brought the temp up which pushed RH down.

The big confounding issue is my leaf temperature offset. At -7±, it's very hard to get RH down low enough to get VPD up to 1.0. Per my previous posting, I bought a new IR gun. The numbers are the same so I've got to believe they're accurate. I'm calibrating the Govee's again and will use those to check/calibrate the C69 RH values.

In term of temperature, I've use a Thermopen to calibrate the Pulse and then bumped that against the C69 and they're in synch.

I've checked temps with fans running and with no fans running, flaps opened and closed and I always end up -5 to -7.

Despite all that, the plants are doing well. There was growth for this first day of flower and they're enjoying the light. I increased the hang height to 12" to try to get a more even light cast and will keep upping the hang height and wattage, if I need to. ATM, wattage is 291 so I'm running at about 90% power.

The only issue I'm seeing is that Erica has developed a nute issue. Two potential causes come to mind - the res is 40 days old and there's a difference in VPD between Donna and Erica of about 0.2.
VPD, even being +0.2 for Erica, would only put it at 1.3 which is not high enough to cause a nute issue with nutes at EC 1.2 so I'm thinking it's time for a new res. I'll do a new res tomorrow AM.


This discoloration showed up since lights out yesterday at 1130.

The fan isn't running. I've removed it from the tent.

Erica

Donna

Adjusted the hang height. The front row on Donna is further from the light than on Erica even though I removed the weights on that part of the plant.

Oh, I did get up at 02 to check the tent and everything was good. What struck me though was that night time VPD should stay fairly close to daytime VPD, according to the folks at Pulse. What I'm seeing, though, is that VPD drops precipitously at lights out and takes a few hours to claw back up to 1.0. I shut the lights out at 1100 today and, in the past hour, the heater has brought the temp up to 77 but RH is 60%.

With a leaf offset of 0°, those 77 + 60 give me a VPD of 1.26 which is perfecto. But my offset is -7 so that puts my VPD in the shitter. :-(

This raises the question-is my offset -7 when the lights are out? I can guess all I want (and have zero expertise to come up with sounds arguments much less a conclusion) so the only way to find out is to find out.

I'll check temps around 2000 today. My hope is that the offset (magically) drops to the "standard" -2 which means that VPD is exactly where I want it because I really would like to avoid having VPD in "bud rot range" and not be able to do much about it. The new tent dehu will be here shortly but it's better to have VPD at the right range instead of having to wring out every last drop of moisture to get it up to 1.x.

Just got a text from Amazon - my new dehu is out for delivery. "Where were you guys two hours ago!" Spoiled, aren't we!

 

[Hafta]

You may want to wait to make any major changes until you get the lid secured. Just a suggestion.

 

[Delps8]

You may want to wait to make any major changes until you get the lid secured. Just a suggestion.

The gap between the lid and the res is really small, ¼" or so. It does impact temperature and RH because it's not sealed but the magnitude of the impact would be hard to measure. At most, it's a couple of square inches of air gap on the underside of the res top.

The only change I'm thinking of is a res change. It's 40± days old and I'm interpreting the nutrient issue as being an indicator that the res needs to be changed. I'll get to the tomorrow.

 

[Delps8]

47/6.5/1.0 (47 days since sprout, week 6 day 5 of the grow, and week 1 day 0 in flower)

Mostly more of the same but, finally, some of the buds are starting to stick up from the rest of the canopy. Donna is on the left. Erica is taking her sweet time about things, however.

Did a new res a few days ago and took the opportunity to check the roots. All's well.

Family portrait from 20241102

Pictures from today. Everything looking healthy. Nute imbalance issue is long gone.

Erica is tiny compare to Donna.

Buds starting to rise from the canopy.

Took these off of Erica today. Most of those are 2 ounce weights, the smaller ones are 1 ounce.

Donna's stems/branches are long and slender. Erica is squat with very short branches and lots of small, light yellow growth. I got rid of some of it today.

VPD been running right at 1.2. Lights on temps are as high as 84 but canopy temp is only in the high 70's and the C69 runs Hugh just enough to keep RH in the 50's. When lights are out, the heater keeps the temp at 76 or so.

Even after some defol, water uptake is about 1 gallon a day. The new tent dehu is doing well-I poured 200ml from the tank when the lights came on today. Te bucket from the Waykar had a couple of gallons from two (maybe three) days ago.

Nutes - as few as I can get away with. PPM has been 630/500 and I topped the res to bring PPM to 750. I'm using the standard Jacks 3-2-1 mixture and have had excellent results topping off the res with nutrient solution.

pH is dropping a bit, as expected, but adding nutes raises pH slightly. There's been much less pH action than I had anticipated.

I haven't changed the hang height or dimmer so Donna is getting close to the light. With buds starting to appear, I'll be sampling a lot more points but, for now, these are the PPFD values.

The front half of Donna is getting very high light and she's loving it. There are no signs of issues but I need to raise the light to get more light in the corner.

It looks like I will be able to keep my flower top temp < 78 and get 1kµmol on the canopy. This grow is running a cool with a leaf temperature offset of -4.

The key to keeping the grow environment is the AC Infinity gear. I can't control the intensity of the light but the Controller 69 and its iPhone app let me control/configure six other devices. That's incredible power for a piece of technology that costs about $100.

 

[Delps8]

51/7.2/1.4

Four days since an update, the main reason being is that there's just not a lot happening. In earlier grows, I've called it a "Maytag repairman grow" and, well, that's how it's been (so far).

Outdoor temps have been 70's to the high 40's but the garage has stayed in the 70's, as expected. A big change has been that humidity has been low so the Waykar has been able to keep RH in the garage in the 20's and 30's. That makes a big difference keeping RH down. It' much easier to add RH than it is to take it out! ("Looking at you, bud rot!")

I added the AC Infinity heater for my previous grow and it's been great. I've changed the light schedule from lights on 2300-1100 to lights on 0600-1800. I want to take advantage of "the heat of the day" (as little as it is) so I'm going to move lights on to 0900-2100. Temps in the tent have been lower than expected with the highs touching 83 vs 85+ in past Fall grows. That's made it easy to keep the grow environment right where I want it.

From the Controller 69 app. That's the RH and humidity distribution for the past week.

Temp, RH, and VPD across the top. The graph at the bottom shows the humidifier run times in white (at the very bottom), the inline fan in light blue/grey blue at the top, and the heater in a darker blue running only at lights out.

I do have to futz with things a bit. When lights come on, I have to open the tent to get dry air in from the garage but, other than that, it's really been a "hands off" grow.

Unlike previous grows, I haven't see the big pH drop I've seen in previous grows. Yes, pH had dropped a few tenths a day for a maybe three or four days but as of day 9, IIRC, that stopped and I've seen pH gradually rising.

I bumped EC to 1.4 and change (720/500) and am adding back using RO + nutrient solution. That's worked well—there is no indication of any issues with nute strength. The only discoloration I'm seeing is that some of the older fan leaves are starting to turn so I've plucked them off.

Per the photos below, buds are starting to form and the branches are growing up above the canopy. Donna is growing much faster than Erica at 20"± vs 12". I've canted the light but there's about a 200µmol difference between the two and there's really nothing I can do to fix that.


The sensor with the blue tape are Govee sensors while the one without tape is the PulseZero. The sensor for the C69 is hanging behind the second Govee from the left.

That white rectangle in the center of the light is a sheet of paper that I taped around that light bar. It cuts PPFD by about 100µmol so it evens out the PPFD very nicely.

Tent dehu working well. Between the weather, the Waykar, and the tent dehu, RH is rarely higher than the high 50's. That little bunch of leaves is Erica. About 12" across and 12" tall.

When I topped Donna, I didn't leave enough of the apical stem and, while working with the plant, both of the branches at the fourth node broke off. Yeh, f'd that up. Despite that, I'm thinking this will be a good harvest. Leaves are a healthy green and, now that she's in flower, the branches are growing quickly and the interior of the plant is starting to "thin out". Since my 2401 grow was a goat rope, it's been a long time since I've seen a cannabis plant up close so I've gotten a little bit frustrated by "all those leaves". I've just forgotten that it tends to thin out when the plant in flower, when the plant gets taller.

Decent canopy.

The HDPE top was a good idea but I should have use ½" instead of ⅜" because the thinner sheet is sagging. The canopy is tilted so I cut a couple of semi-circles out of a net pot cover and put them under net pots to even out the plants. Donna had a double stack, Erica just needed one.

The branch structure is pretty robust. I have a trellis but Donna is only 20" tall and I've been using a silica supplement so I may not need to install it. Note the two USB fans on the res top. The plastic hose in the center is the hose for the doser.

Light before and after raising the light. I wasn't seeing any issues with light at >1200 so I raised the right side of the light about 2".

Lotsa words here but not much happening yet. Per the photos, both plants are just now starting to flower so the pace of change should pick up from here.

 

[Delps8]

Day 75, week 8.1, week 2.3 in flower.

Update coming-just putting today's notes together.

 

[Delps8]

Lit up the Spider Farmer GlowR80's. They're adding up to 400µmol of 660nm.

This picture is with the Growcraft shut off but I'm running them together. With the R80's running, the wattage on the Growcraft is now 170 watts, down from 330 watts. In addition to dropping to (holy shit) half power, the % of red photons is way up (which is why I can cut back on the wattage on the Growcraft).

Not only is red% up and wattage down but temperature in the tent looks to be down about 2°.

I was working in the tent today and, when I tried to super crop a bud, I snapped it off. Very no bueno.

This picture was taken at 12:41:57, less than 5 minutes after the accident.

Taken at 12:45:55-four minutes later and it was gone. Shit.

I'm FOLA (Army acronym for "fucking off, local area") but will have an update tomorrow.

 

[Delps8]

Day 72, week 10.2, week 4.4 of flower.
40 days to go.


Tap, tap, tap "Is this thing on?"

Wow, it's been a few weeks. :-(

"In the previous episode, we saw Delps adding Vipar Glow R80 lights to his. Let's check back in with him and see how everything is going, shall we?"

That's the Bob Ross/Marlin Perkins imitation. I'll stop now and promise to never do that again.

The R80's were money well spent. Unless you're running HPS, buy them. They're on Black Friday sale for $60. That's not even a decision.

The 2° drop in ambient seems to be about right and, with the weather cooling off over the past couple of weeks, the garage temp is dropping into the low to mid 70's so it's a "be careful what you ask for" because tent temps are down below where I'd like them.

The supplemental lights are allowing me to achieve my objective of having 1kµmol on the canopy while keeping the temp of the flowers <=78°. The buds are just now forming a coherent mass so this is where the challenge comes in but, in the two weeks or so since adding the R80's, the temps on the buds have been in range and I've been able to get good light on the canopy so I'm thinking that I'll be able to pull this off.

While the temps on the canopy have been good, RH and intracanopy temps and RH have played nicely, as well. VPD is at 1.3-1.4 and intrlcanopy is 74± and 50-55%. Take that, bud rot!

The light's the easy thing so here's some detail.

Light data from yesterday, with Donna in the left two columns and Erica on the right. Erica is, frankly, an afterthought and I might be better off culling her but I spend, essentially, no time tending to her so I'll just leave her be and deal with her when I harvest Donna.

From the tent cam. R80's shiny and red. The white rectangles over some of the lights are bond paper that I put on the light bar to block light.

1, 3, and 5 are sensors in the canopy. 2 and 4 are in the Koolatron wine fridge that I converted to a drying and curing device.

From yesterday with the R80's giving some Christmas light cheer! I raised the light so it's now inside the top of the tent. A bit of a PITA to adjust but I'm happy with the PPFD map.

Just kidding.

I've added my Mars SP3000 to light the front row.

There was a drop off of about 100µmol because the colas in the back are so much taller. Canting the light just wasn't working out. I bought the portable clothing rack* a couple of years ago when I had an auto grow that went insane so I hooked up my Mars that I retired in 2022 and put it to use. It's only running at 65 watts but it's what's needed to even out PPFD.

Here are the numbers from today, just a few minutes ago, in fact:

Lots of lights in there but they're well placed and current wattage for all four lights (treating the two R80's as one light) 192+80+64+113=449 watts. The Vipar is the one running 113 watts and that's there only because that plant is mucked up.

But it's also a reminder that I shouldn't be growing two plants in my tent. Where have I heard that?

Light values for this grow:

There's no indication that these plants are getting too much light. Now that I've figured out some viable ways to control PPFD on this canopy, there's no reason not to increase PPFD. The main light, the Growcraft, is a 330 watt driver and it running at only 190 watts. IIRC, the Mars is 300 watts so I've got plenty of head room.

The R80's have been the key to 1kµmol at <=78°.


*Finally getting to use the bottled nutes I stopped using years ago. They're sitting on the shelf at the bottom of the clothing rack to act as a counterweight to the Mars.

 

[Delps8]

Day 72, week 10.2, week 4.4 of flower continued.

Time for the AC Infinity tongue bath comments. The Controller 69 Pro + has been superb. It's got everything playing nicely together and VPD has been totally rock steady at both at lights out, when the heater is keeping the tent at 76° (1° above bud rot threshold) and for most of the time during lights on, which is 0900 to 2100.

Though the C69 has been the brains of the outfit, I had to replace it. A few weeks ago, it started dropping off the network. I was able to connect to it via Bluetooth but the WiFi connection was failing. I contacted tech support and the outcome was to roll back the latest firmware update. That worked fine for the few days it took for the new controller to arrive. The switch over from the old unit to the new one took only a few minutes.

And just when you thought it was safe, as best I can tell the new controller is not remembering the setting for the heater. WTF? I set it to run at level 6 and keep a temperature of 76° and, when Kasa lights it up at 2101, that setting is gone. So that's another call to their tech support on Monday. Grr.

I have ordered their AI-based controller so, instead of getting yet another C69 Pro+, I'll see if they can get the Controller AI out to me.

Per above, I'm running with VPD at 1.3 and, with my nutes at 800/500, have seen no issues. Nothing but lots of green leaves. I did have something go sideways in week 2 or 3 that was a nute imbalance but I fixed that by doing nothing.

Water uptake has been consistently good. I'm adding about 1.5 gallons per day. The Waykar has been running for weeks and RH has been in the 30's in the garage. With the cooler temps outdoors, RH has been up into the 80's and, heaven forehand, it's actually rained (lightly) a couple of times but winter is the "rainy" season here in Southern California.

I can't say good enough things about the tent dehu. I moved it into a position between the two plants and it runs constantly. I empty the reservoir every morning and it's pulling out 200ml on average. Take that, bud rot!

For no particular reason, I did a new res a week ago (±) so I'm seeing pH dropping a bit. There have been a few days when I've had to add 2 ml of Up, twice a day. I use Chemboys Up which is quite a bit stronger than GH. I add the Up by hand since dropping pH is short lived and not worth purging the doser just to have to purge is again a few days later when the res switches back to pH rising.

Oh, yeh, I bought a Bluelab monitor when I did my one grow in 2017 and it's worked just fine. About a week ago, the displays started to…display "8" and Bluelab tech support told me to do a factory reset - unplug the power cord, hold down the brightness button (lower right), plug in the power cord. I ended up having to do that twice but it's back on track. The Mongua is not cheap but I used it for one grow in 2017 and then starting again in 2021 so I can't complain.

When it was on the fritz and before I called tech support, I thought about replacing it. It's $450 for a new one and I do have a doser that tells me pH. Was it worth $450 to have an EC monitor + a second device to tell me pH (which is about 0.05 different even after I calibrate)?

In short, I don't think so because EC does not matter.

EC simply tells you how much current a given solution will pass. We convert it to PPM at the 500 scale or the 700 scale but those conversions are just telling us the concentration of a solution of NaCl or KCL that has the same level of electrical conductivity ( I think it's Na and K but I could have them bassackwards). EC tells us exactly nothing about what chemicals are in the nutrient solution in our res.

That is an interesting discussion and, if anyone's interested, I'm more than happy to share my thoughts and the research behind it, that leads me to that conclusion.

Back to my monitor being on the fritz. Would I have spent $450 for a new MONGUA? No.

I check EC when I mix a batch of nutes because it's a safety check. There have been times when I've screwed up the mix and the EC was way off as a result. But, in terms of knowing how much N, P, or Fe is in a res, the only way to do that is to get the water analyzed. EC can't tell you squat about what's in the res.

 

[Delps8]

Attached document will help when converting lux to PPFD.

 

[Delps8]

Day 78, week 11.1, week 5.3 of flower.

Same old same old in most respects. The buds are starting to stack and they're getting sticky. My photos and autos both have taken 110± days so there's about a month to go.

Weather has, for the most part, cooperated though the biggest confounder is RH. The garage is fairly well shielded from temperature swings since it's an attached garage but also, for whatever reason, the floor of the garage is very warm. Given that it's proximate to the water heater, I suspect that someone did something brilliant and ran a pipe through that corner of the garage. Who knows.

While temperatures go no lower than the low 70's, there's no control over RH and we had a few days of cold temps and very low RH. From time to time, we get Santa Ana winds which is warm air (80°+) coming in from the desert but the cold and dry was different and it drove VPDas high as 1.8. I shut off Tent Dehu and Hugh was running at 10/10 for a few hours to get VPD down to 1.5'ish. That took a couple of gallons out of the res and, with the much higher transpiration, I've got a little tip burn. No biggie.

PPM was 820/500 or so and, by adding back just RO, it's down to 730/500.

Plants are looking great. Color is a solid green but not "too much nitrogen green". Erica, the little one, is a darker green color but that plant has something strange going on.

I just now measured Donna and it drives home the need to disabuse myself of the notion of growing two plants. These are "Original Glue" (Gorilla Glue) seeds so nothing exotic yet, Donna is 36" wide and 44" tall so it sorta stupid to think about > 1 plant. I did cut the branches off of the left side of Erica earlier in the grow because it was obvious that I was running out of room. (Is that why she's growing strangely? I wouldn't think.)

Erica is growing "well" - strange shape and development but she's strong and moving into flower.

Donna has stopped her vertical growth and her buds are starting to stack and get sticky. I remove some of the little buds under the canopy and they're sticky with a sweet smell to them.

Light has been same as before, averaging about 950 across the canopy but I have had to add the Mars to the tent and that light is 70 watts and the Growcraft at 170.

VPD has been 1.4± but, per above, had gone much higher a few times in the past few days.

Temps have been a little low in the AM. If I leave the tent closed up, ambient will get up to 82 by about noon but I've chosen to set up the Mars to get light on the front row so ambient is only 78 in the tent. Even with the Mars in place, it will hit 81± by early afternoon. That's the pattern I've been following for that past few days.


Erica's unusual bud development. Anyone seen this before?

Canopy shot. I really wish I hadn't lost three bud-bearing-branches. :-(

Eye level shot. Donna simply dwarfs Erica. Yet another "Twins" grow. You know how unreliable those photoperiod genetics are! ;-)

 

[Delps8]

Day 79, week 11.2, week 5.4 of flower

More of nothing much going on.

Doser ran 20 seconds =0.333 minutes 4 ml Up. How exciting!

No change to lights. Donna averaging 940 and Erica is at 822.

There was a strong smell when I walked in the garage and it looks like the flowers are starting to clump and swell. I describe them as "fecund".

They strike me as being larger than they were yesterday. Or perhaps they look bigger because I was standing closer to them?

This is the structure of the buds on Erica. Different.

And these are buds from the right side of Donna that are sticking out under the Vipar. They're getting lots of light because they're only a few inches below the light. I put the sensor of the Apogee at the level of one of the fan leaves and it was reading 1988µmol. The bud itself is getting >2k. These values are way outside of what they can tolerate but I really can't do much about them so we'll just see how things turn out.

Some of the leaves that are getting similar, very high amounts of light were exhibiting nutrient issues - brown spots. That was caused by some combination of very high light and that was when VPD went stupid for a couple of days. The issue cropped up in just a few of the leaves which I take as a testimony to how hardy cannabis is. Despite getting huge amounts of light (probably 1500µmol) and being in harsh conditions, the leaves had very few issues.

Oh, yeh, I've been checking LST as well as temps on the flower tops and the warmest flower top is 75°. Gotta put in a word about the IR gun I'm using. About a month ago, I was on the AC Infinity site and found that they had an IR thermo that could be calibrated but that also gave you a VPD reading. I ordered one right away and replaced the IR thermo I was using because the older one was a few degrees off.

How to calibrate an IR thermo? I used an ice water bath and then a container of boiling water. The trick is that you need to change the emissivity setting on the thermometer so that it can read water and then use aim it at the ice bath and boiling water.

 

[Delps8]

Day 82, week 11.5, and week 6.0 of flower.

Checked the tent this AM and added RO to bring PPM down to 770/500 in case RH was going to go stupid low and the car coming back in the PM which might drive VPD > 2. I've had to open the garage door and the back door to the garage at times when my housemate gets back. Temps hit 85° in the tent and RH has been as low below 30% at times, so I've got to dump heat to get things back in line.

Not today!

Checked water levels and added the RO and didn't set up the Mars.

Temps have been low enough that if I run the Mars, which means I've got to open the flaps to the tent, the temp in the tent drops to 78. My thinking is that it's better to have ¾ of the canopy at 1kµmol and ambient of 81 than it is to drop temps to 78° just to get 900µmol on the small strip along the front row.

This chart, from Chandra, is what makes me think that's the right approach. The chart show net photosynthesis at varying levels of temperature and CO2. Net P is not a proxy for yield but it is an indicator of growth and I suspect there's a strong correlation with metabolic rate, as well. Put that together and I went for temperature rather than PPFD.

And that's all I did. No futzing with the "lamp shades" on the lights and didn't take light readings (gasp!). Just add a couple of gallons of RO and walked away. Pretty good way to grow weed, I'm thinking—add some water and LTFA.

 

[Delps8]

Day 86, week 12.2, flower week 6.4

Things are finally starting to shape up.The buds are getting pretty big (more photos later) and, as of a few days ago, were really sticky to the point where I had to use rubbing alcohol to clean up where I brushed up against the buds.

Lots of the same. 1.2 gals of water/day, adding back RO and some nutes each day, tend dehu is pulling about 200ml water/day.

Temps are still cool and RH has been low so temps in the garage has been low. I had the tent shut for a few days, per my previous post, to keep the heat in but came up with the idea of standing up a big piece of cardboard on the clothing rack to keep the heat in. That's worked really well with temps getting to 80 by late AM so it's nice and warm in there all day.

Flower tops are in mid-70's so things are going fine with "keep temps below 78 or else". I'm thankful for that.

With the colas getting heavy, I've added yoyo's and that's making it easier to get even light on the buds. I'm taking light readings at the top of the bud. Seeing that buds do very little in the way of photosynthesis, should I be raising PPFD to that I'm getting 1k on the leaves or should it be 1k on the buds? That's a question for the pointy headed guys, I guess.

Seeing that I don't have to futz with the lights anymore, the whole "grower" routine is to visit the tent in the AM and then again just before 2100 to shut off the Mars and move the clothing rack out of the way. All in all, 30 minutes?

These buds are about 3" across so I definitely need the plant hangers.

One (heretical) thought - if I've got to run a heater to keep the plants warm, instead of using electricity to keep plants warm, why not just grow autos and turn the electricity into photons into yield?

In addition, if I'm growing autos, I don't have to "close up the tent" every night (like I'm going to do in about 10 minutes). I can just leave the lights on or I can close up the tent when it's convenient for me rather than when the plant needs it.

Yeh, the plant. Two plants? No thanks.

Oh, yeh, the nute bottles on the shelf at the bottom of the clothing rack. That's why I kept the bottles. They've got water in them so they're a counterweight for the light.

Light info

Donna in column A and B, Erica's in column C.

OK, time to shut the tent. Ciao.