DIY SIPs Duterte's Nightmare - Mystery S. Asia Sativa - Zkittlz, Runtz, OG UV, God's Gift, GG#4, 1st Grow In 20yrs

What I've found with test containers (a 5 gal pail double bucket with 4-inch net cup wicking foot, and a nested 27 gal w/ 2, 4-inch wicking feet and both containers produce similarly relative results) with no plants in them is that peat/perlite promix and coco wick the most water, in that the moisture gradient begins at substantially over field capacity for first 1, 2 inches then goes up like an inverse square law. At 6 inches from bottom it appears, feels, to be about 2/3 field capacity (we need the electronic moisture sensors but ones you can bury).

With perlite field capacity was barely exceeded at very bottom, less so than peat/coco at any rate. Gradient was similar rate of moisture level change but noticeably drier in bottom 6 inches than peat/coco (tested peat and coco btw, saw not enough difference to confidently give the impression of it)

With hydroton, the trend towards a drier planter matrix continued. This time closer to FC in 1st inch but still def. over it. 2nd inch was at FC and then a slightly drier middle portion of the planter generally. The top third of all of them was difficult to find difference. Was some, and it kept with trends, but my eyes and hand are currently capable of only so much moisture measurement and my confidence level in them for the top 1/3 is below 66%. I suppose that's well over probable cause...lol.

These tests were to measure results of different materials in foot only. I wanted to develop the possibility of, if grower finds his soil is too wet, possibly changing the wicking foot out and replacing with one holding different material. Not super practical, I know. But early days and I'm trying to understand the hydrological and other physics at work.
 
ReservoirDog said:
Check entry 127. It's starting to dissipate on them today when that photo was taken but was unmistakable the last 3 days. Sorry.
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maybe a slight chlorosis along the leaf margins... maybe a little Mg deficient.
 
All PPMs are 500/Hanna. Please I could use the great cannabis overmind’s assistance.
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This plant is my canary in the coal mine. It’s ‘metabolism’ runs faster than the others and this issue showed up 8 days ago. It is a transient issue showing up on oldest leaves first. Plants are SIPs in SS#4 with worm castings, dolopril, some potassium-heavy conditioners and small amount aged poultry manure (300 ppm before Salts)

I run tap water, 0-10ppm, MC 2 Part mixed, at time issue arose, 10-7-10 @ 350-400 ppm, .5g Epsom.

Raised K in a new mix swapped in at time of discovery to 10-7-12. Upped PPMs to 500 in fertigation. Been running these feed levels and org/salts mixes hoping to avoid nute retention potentially exacerbated by passive nature of system.

Today observing issue in younger leaves. Actions taken: I’ve maintained 10-7-12 NPK but raised PPM significantly to 850ppm.

Thoughts? Recognize this pattern?
 
ReservoirDog said:
What I've found with test containers (a 5 gal pail double bucket with 4-inch net cup wicking foot, and a nested 27 gal w/ 2, 4-inch wicking feet and both containers produce similarly relative results) with no plants in them is that peat/perlite promix and coco wick the most water, in that the moisture gradient begins at substantially over field capacity for first 1, 2 inches then goes up like an inverse square law. At 6 inches from bottom it appears, feels, to be about 2/3 field capacity (we need the electronic moisture sensors but ones you can bury).

With perlite field capacity was barely exceeded at very bottom, less so than peat/coco at any rate. Gradient was similar rate of moisture level change but noticeably drier in bottom 6 inches than peat/coco (tested peat and coco btw, saw not enough difference to confidently give the impression of it)

With hydroton, the trend towards a drier planter matrix continued. This time closer to FC in 1st inch but still def. over it. 2nd inch was at FC and then a slightly drier middle portion of the planter generally. The top third of all of them was difficult to find difference. Was some, and it kept with trends, but my eyes and hand are currently capable of only so much moisture measurement and my confidence level in them for the top 1/3 is below 66%. I suppose that's well over probable cause...lol.

These tests were to measure results of different materials in foot only. I wanted to develop the possibility of, if grower finds his soil is too wet, possibly changing the wicking foot out and replacing with one holding different material. Not super practical, I know. But early days and I'm trying to understand the hydrological and other physics at work.
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Interesting observations. :thanks:

I grow in smaller, and therefore shorter, containers so maybe that gradient works to my advantage. And I also think having water roots in the reservoir is a net positive.
 
ReservoirDog said:
34EF3B97-F7E4-4C6F-8D1A-28DBF77C2D6A.jpeg
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You've got some interveinal chlorosis there – lightening of color between the leaf veins. Yours is a bit more regular in pattern and "airbrushed" than what I've seen on one of my phenos.

Interveinal chlorosis is seen in early stage deficiency of: N, Mg, Fe, Zn, Mn. Which of these you've got, I don't know... just looking at some info online, and my Rosenthal book, Marijuana Grower's Handbook, 2010.

Apparently, Mn deficiency is rare, and is associated with Fe & Zn deficiency. I'm guessing you've got N and Mg covered, so I would throw out a guess that it's Fe... Rosenthal recommends checking pH, and feed of Fe, Zn, Mn... because the deficiencies are often found together.

I do see a darkened/reddish petiole there on that leaf, which could be a sign of Mg deficiency.
 
ReservoirDog said:
I guess the question is always, "Did growing those lower nugs prevent a nice large cola from stacking up top?" Thankfully, there is no, "best way" It's like art, we get to experiment and find our groove. I'm giving it a go @Hafta, and really appreciate your support. I may tag you for questions from time to time, but I hope you feel welcome and choose to drop by whenever you like on your own accord. Grateful for the guidance, regardless. One reason I'm doing this is that I have long thought there are few things more attractive than a well-tailored skirt. :cool: Agreed?
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Having grown up in the 60's and 70's with mini-skirts and hot pants, I absolutely agree.
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If I was concerned about one nice big cola up top, I probably wouldn't top or train.
My main limbs coming from the trunk, and their primary secondaries, terminate at the perimeter of the grow. These are stacked all the way down to the skirt (about six inche nugs), powered by the skirt. There are 20 - 30 of these.
The tops in the center of the "basket" created by the trained limbs are the secondary and tertiary branches from the mains. There are about fifty of these. Many of these would also have been removed during commonly practiced defoliation/Lolli popping. These are reasonably well "stacked" several inches down. The bud density makes it sticky, and nearly impossible to see how deeply they are stacked.
If the "larf" would have been removed, as well as the skirt leaves, there would still have been a potential shortage of "solar power and spare nutrients" to be redirected to the upper nugs following the common "third week of flower" defoliation. I remove 100+ leaves at this time, entirely from the tops.

My last grow, a photoperiod, yielded 411 grams (trimmed, dried, and cured) with a 2' x 3' canopy ( 0.537 square meters) or 738 grams per square meter. It was 22" tall.
This time around I added two 65 watt full spectrum LED lights specifically for the perimeter buds. They are height and angle adjustable. My current grow is 2' x 2' and 18" tall ( 0.371 square meters). Harvest is tomorrow.

S20220908_0003.jpg
 
Azimuth said:
Interesting observations. :thanks:

I grow in smaller, and therefore shorter, containers so maybe that gradient works to my advantage. And I also think having water roots in the reservoir is a net positive.
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Re my test results: These tests were not run concurrently and although conditions, as I could see them and control them, were well matched, there are a lot more I don't know, can't see and can't control than things I can. This is why it's important that results like these are only heavily leaned on by growers after they've been repeated in different locales by different people over and over and we gain confidence from that. This test evidence id valid only in informing future tests. You were warned.

Major Rant Incoming...

I've been holding out on you guys with these test results because I know this is how we find ourselves lost in blind alleys sometimes. Someone does a test and then it gets repeated over and over again ... by mouth.... and people respond to the repetition of simply hearing results, the same results affirmative results, yes, because its all from the same test.... the same way they do after hearing about a similar test being repeated by multiple qualified operators. This happens when people want to believe something, obviously, but that's approx. 50% of the time, at worst, so its an issue.

Also, the results match up with the science pretty well, but this hides another trap. If people lean-in to test results like this in part because they are supported by their understanding of basic hydrology, a certain percentage of them, should they find themselves in an uncomfortable position in the future, will instead choose to abandon basic hydrology and not the near-worthless test results, merely for reasons of ego. It makes no sense, but it happens every day, all day long. Basic hydrological science is backed up by millions, billions, hell, trillions of data points collected around the world, for centuries, by qualified and sometimes celebrated individuals, teams, hell, nations. Whereas those test results are from a guy a month ago using his bare-ass hands for metrics. Still, people will abandon 'science', ie reason, (but make sure to leave it lyin' around handy-like for tomorrow's debacle) for the sake of being and staying right in the eyes of others, because no-one properly challenges them anymore. Their 'beliefs' are to be respected no matter what, and this is the kind of insanity that follows. I want no part of that, let me tell you.
 
Not sure if your rant is directed at me with all of my various "experiments" or not, but I'm going to take the other side of some of your points.

But first I will say that, although I don't generally use scientific instruments in my trials, I try my best to disclose my methods and clearly state that my results are just that. My results. Seems like almost every aspect of my grow is non-standard and someone else might get slightly different results without even realizing their setup is just slightly different which can almost certainly affect results.
 
Hafta said:
If I was concerned about one nice big cola up top, I probably wouldn't top or train.
My main limbs coming from the trunk, and their primary secondaries, terminate at the perimeter of the grow. These are stacked all the way down to the skirt (about six inche nugs), powered by the skirt. There are 20 - 30 of these.
The tops in the center of the "basket" created by the trained limbs are the secondary and tertiary branches from the mains. There are about fifty of these. Many of these would also have been removed during commonly practiced defoliation/Lolli popping. These are reasonably well "stacked" several inches down. The bud density makes it sticky, and nearly impossible to see how deeply they are stacked.
If the "larf" would have been removed, as well as the skirt leaves, there would still have been a potential shortage of "solar power and spare nutrients" to be redirected to the upper nugs following the common "third week of flower" defoliation. I remove 100+ leaves at this time, entirely from the tops.

My last grow, a photoperiod, yielded 411 grams (trimmed, dried, and cured) with a 2' x 3' canopy ( 0.537 square meters) or 738 grams per square meter. It was 22" tall.
This time around I added two 65 watt full spectrum LED lights specifically for the perimeter buds. They are height and angle adjustable. My current grow is 2' x 2' and 18" tall ( 0.371 square meters). Harvest is tomorrow.

S20220908_0003.jpg
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This is very interesting and much appreciated Hafta. I've been thinking on the subject quite a lot of late and did some reading on grapes that is front-of-mind for me when now taking up cannabis culturing again.

I pick a few hundred pounds of middling to poor quality grapes from my suburban 'vineyard' each year, (3 massively extravagant, almost wild plants that have nearly encircled the house over the 20 yrs since planted) so I watch the ripening process up close and with some interest. My recent reading on the topic is quite clear, all processes, vegetative, fruit set, ripening, are dependent on the soil, yes, the climate/atmosphere, yes, and the light... but it's not the light hitting the fruit, especially during ripening, that's critical. In fact, light's overall impact on ripening is low and goes down as the process matures, and is almost completely a process between leaf surface and light flux, not the fruit directly being hit by light. Temperature impacts the fruit ripeness directly, mostly, and I think with fruits, that's where we might get things confused as laymen.

For example an Apple. We associate redness with ripeness, but they are related by correlation only, not causation (mostly, 'ripeness' is something of a moving target as a term to some). The redness is an accumulation of pigment that is a defence against UV damage, as with humans, but unlike humans doesn't recede quickly because the apple is stuck there in place, thus there is little reason for the apple to develop such an adaptive process as reducing the pigment. I think we, lay people, have wrongly associated redness with ripeness casually in our minds and subsequently associated direct light upon the fruit as critical ripening action. Anyway, ripening, engorgement and sweetness in most fruit, it turns out, are in subtle ways influenced by light, but via the leaf, not by directly striking on the fruit, and light has a decreasing impact on ripeness over time, prominence over which is taken up by temperature very soon after fruit set.

Now, obviously, we're not growing fruit, we're growing cannabis. And light, especially UV light, appears to impact the development of trichomes. But trichomes are developed by and within the plant, the THC is developed by the plant and is not found in trichomes alone in testing, just mostly. My point really is that I believe its possible that we growers may have made some of the same assumptions we have about apples, with cannabis and focused exclusively on light directly hitting the flower as the sole ripening process to our detriment. It doesn't seem to me yet proven that the trifecta of bud 'ripeness', swelling, hardening and THC content, is solely accomplished by light flux striking the fluorescence alone.

This leaves all the other, previous processes out of the discussion, but I thought I'd wonder aloud about ripening itself as an extreme example, and question to ask. Truly, I don't know the answer.
 
ReservoirDog said:
I've been holding out on you guys with these test results because I know this is how we find ourselves lost in blind alleys sometimes. Someone does a test and then it gets repeated over and over again ... by mouth.... and people respond to the repetition of simply hearing results, the same results affirmative results, yes, because its all from the same test.... the same way they do after hearing about a similar test being repeated by multiple qualified operators. This happens when people want to believe something, obviously, but that's approx. 50% of the time, at worst, so its an issue.
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I think there is real value to hands-on experiments even if they are more loosely controlled than the scientists among us would prefer. That doesn't invalidate the results in my mind but rather provides fodder for others to try it or some variation of it. It all advances the "science" or at least the art, of whatever was studied.

ReservoirDog said:
Also, the results match up with the science pretty well, but this hides another trap. If people lean-in to test results like this in part because they are supported by their understanding of basic hydrology, a certain percentage of them, should they find themselves in an uncomfortable position in the future, will instead choose to abandon basic hydrology and not the near-worthless test results, merely for reasons of ego
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But that's how most of the science was at least begun, long before fancy scientific instruments. Some caveman probably came across a burning field of cannabis and got high. Then he did it again by accident in his cave by spilling some onto the fire. Then his buddy did it on purpose. No real science there, only observation, but by repeated attempts to try to recreate something we stumble on new stuff. The caveman probably never cobbed his buds, but I'll bet all of that happened mostly, and likely, entirely without a scientific control.

ReservoirDog said:
Still, people will abandon 'science', ie reason, (but make sure to leave it lyin' around handy-like for tomorrow's debacle) for the sake of being and staying right in the eyes of others, because no-one properly challenges them anymore. Their 'beliefs' are to be respected no matter what, and this is the kind of insanity that follows. I want no part of that, let me tell you.
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I'm kind of this way with draughting. I haven't had great success yet but because I trust certain others with their results I'm willing to keep trying. And I may continue for many cycles even if I don't have success. But thats because I trust someone else's results that themselves haven't been scientifically validated.

So, I think there is great value to non-scientific "experiments." That's how most advances get going. Maybe they are perfected with science, but they sure don't start out that way.
 
Azimuth said:
Not sure if your rant is directed at me with all of my various "experiments" or not, but I'm going to take the other side of some of your points.

But first I will say that, although I don't generally use scientific instruments in my trials, I try my best to disclose my methods and clearly state that my results are just that. My results. Seems like almost every aspect of my grow is non-standard and someone else might get slightly different results without even realize their setup is just slightly different which can almost certainly affect results.
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Oh cripes no, absolutely not directed at you. Doesn't mean I wasn't hoping you'd take up the argument, for sure, but no.
 
Some humans in the presence of challenge opt for desertion. No point for someone trying to prove something they actually never grasped… besides people tend to do that 👇
ReservoirDog said:
and people respond to the repetition of simply hearing results
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Reminds me of the tittle from Richard Dawkins the blind watch maker, have you seen any of his documentaries? Sure is good and interesting, this guy is challenging Darwin’s evolution theory’s, god and religion… gotta have some balls to do that.

When the data backs me up (not often), I like to put it on my thread, most of the times I don’t get a peer with enough force in their statement to challenge the status quo, or it’s just not everyone is here to challenge anything but to just look at other peoples success and failure at growing weed.

:passitleft:
 
There's a second-half to my thoughts about sharing, specifically why I hadn't yet, the results of some initial SIP testing but I'm going to keep it to addendum length. I simply felt the need to wait for a little bit more experience, which came a little quicker than planned when I dug two 27 gal SIPs with plants back up again last week, and time to reflect before sharing. Just normal human-stuff. When the SIP interest seemed to ramp up I decided, well, I felt like I was holding out on people, frankly. Thus, I felt the need to explain my human feelings behind the hold-out - which predictably escalated into a proper rant because, well, we, "live in interesting times" and I am easily interested.
 
I guess I'm not clear on what you are trying to convey. Are you saying we should hold off on various SIP experiments, or maybe not share them with others until there have been many more repeats of the same success?

That can't be right because, if we at least share the failures and other observations, that may turn on a light bulb for someone else who then makes a comment and we all learn more about what we are doing and know better what to focus on when tweaking something or trying to fix something gone astray. That all accelerates the learning curve and "state of the art" for everyone.

I'm not looking to argue with you just to take the other side, but maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.
 
Don't misunderstand. Yes, too I value the testing types I undertook, feel them to be of value to others, and intended to do so. I was explaining the human responses responsible for my foot-dragging. My reaction to the greater world, not even necc. the world of cannabis threads, forums, growers, etc. was at the heart therein. You can take me quite directly, with little to no 'subtext left unaddressed yet obvious', I try my best to avoid that sort of discussion in this sort of, er, forum.
 
I don't think there was any value to keeping it to myself temporarily and felt I owed you an explanation why I acted that way. They aren't justifications so much as descriptions of feelings that motivated actions. That's what I got, I don't claim to know what's correct and just aimed to explain myself. In 'embracing the argument' I was merely turning my cheek to embrace the person who wanted to take it up and thereby express my value of him. You'll find me a frustrating combination of agnosticism and opinion. Everyone does.
 
ReservoirDog said:
Major Rant Incoming...
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I read this as... there is no substitute for science done well. :) which by the way, in no way excludes imagination and intuition.
 
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