Emmie's Berry D'licious 2019 True Living Organic: No AACT, SCROG, COB, SuperSoil Production Grow & Seed Run

[Emilya Green]

Not a lot going on tonight as I patiently wait for the seedlings to drain their cups the first time. It will happen maybe tonight before bedtime if things keep accelerating, but I am betting tomorrow morning we need to water the first two. Ever since the young roots decided they needed some oxygen the water usage has been hovering between .5ml/hr to even worse, when at the peak I measured an easy 1ml/hr on all the plants. As the water table continues to drop I am seeing improvement. This morning the measured rate of water use for 8 hours overnight was .56ml/hr Just a few minutes ago I measured the water use since I got home about 6 hours ago and found that as more of the roots have been reactivated, the use has crept up to .65ml/hr and I suspect that as the water table continues to drop this usage rate will continue to accelerate. Now I can see why the rise gets so much more dramatic right at the end of the wet/dry cycle, when the water has almost been used up. Have you ever noticed how all the leaves rise up and the plant looks deliriously happy, right before it is about to have thirst issues? It is all starting to make sense now.

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg. Day 7
First, the glamour shot:

As you can see the third (!) set of leaves are coming in and all seems to be well with most of the plants. One more could not hold itself up without help, so a leaning pole and cubby has been created to keep it upright while it strengthens. In the wild this would have ended up being a ground hugging plant, but that sort of nonsense is not going to be allowed here in Emmie's garden.
Here are the rest of them, showing off what they can, cotyledons still all healthy, green and extended:

With the 3rd set of leaves starting to appear across the table it was time to increase the light intensity again, this time up to the lowest recommended veg level, of 14,000 LUX. I also turned on the second bank of LEDs so that now all 6 COBS are filling out the light pattern, and all of the dead spots have gone away. I had to lower the wattage now back to 66w per bank and this raised the light intensity across the table to where we need it to be. Now the total wattage coming out of the wall is 132w.
I contacted our sponsor today, GeoPots, and ordered some new 1 gallon transplant pots with the velcro down the side and they should be here well in time for moving out of these cups. Water usage is still way above the evaporation rate of 2ml/day by a significant amount, so we know they are alive. They still haven't gotten to that big spurt when they start filling out the roots, but of course they are only a week old, so I do forgive them. They still are only chugging away at .6ml/hr and I am sure that they would be able to drain the cups in a day or so, but I can still measure a little more or less of 100ml of water still left in the cups as compared to our reference cup of slowly drying out soil from the supersoil bin. I am still not willing to fully and properly water until those bottom roots see oxygen. I also don't like to see plants go longer than their top root's capability to survive a drought, and that is only a few days at this point... so, I did a mini watering across the board... not much... maybe 10ml, and most of it right down the center (there are not a lot of side roots yet) This however was special water, mixed up early this morning with some Recharge... and this brown microbe rich water, in just a small amount so as to not overwhelm the plants, should help to get things going. Already, 45 minutes after this treatment, I can see leaves that were horizontal, now lifting. Leaves that were starting to droop a bit, are now going back into the horizontal plain. I even kicked the oscillating fan up from low to medium. We are rockin this!

 

[clrwatrtom]

My sweet sensimilla

 

[clrwatrtom]

U are rockin this thang!

 

[Madmel]

Late for the party, but I am awaiting your every word! I know next to nothing about growing indoors.

Love your approach with the micro-organisms. I used the same approach in my outdoor grow.

 

[Carcass]

The pics didn't come through-But I can picture your plants.. in my minds eye,they've all got smiles on their little faces....

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg, Day 8.
This is insane. The third node is in on the biggest plants and already the 4th is in sight. I caught myself thinking about topping soon.



This made me ask myself just when this would be considered the veg phase instead of the seedling phase, and throwing all caution to the wind I increased the light intensity still more this morning before I trekked across Missouri for a dinner buffet. 15k LUX didn't seem bold enough, so I kicked the system up to a very cool 18K LUX at 170w.



The plants did not vaporize as a result... that was the good news, and actually I could find nary a complaint from the lot... even the runt seemed to like it.

Water use over the 14 hours monitored today shows that water usage is indeed up, but whether that is due to the added light intensity or the water table continuing to drop, is still an unknown. More experiments will be done to see if added light intensity in the future equates to automatically using more water, and I think it is a combination of both factors in this case. Water usage is significantly up in all of the plants, and goes down in accordance to their age. From oldest to youngest we see .87ml/hr, .77ml/hr, .74ml/hr, .70ml/hr and .54ml/hr in the runt. I am still expecting to be able to see an exponential increase in usage as the water becomes scarce and new roots come out with the inflow of the oxygen, seeking all of the water, sometime this weekend.



Lastly, the control. This is a cup of supersoil right out of the bin with some moisture content, and topped with pine bark mulch just as the other containers enjoy. I have said for years that the evaporation rate is negligible as compared to the plants using up the water in a container. Now, I have had a chance to measure that evaporation rate. It appears to change according to the RH in the room, but it averages between 2 and 3 ml/day... or a rate of .125 ml/hr at the most. Even compared to the typical water usage of a seedling, evaporation is measurably slower.

 

[Emilya Green]

alright... please excuse the double post, but I wanted to get the pictures in there. I accidentally first posted this in my watering thread and then tried to copy/paste it back into this thread... it looked like it worked, pictures and all, but apparently it didn't.

 

[Old Salt]

Water use over the 14 hours monitored today shows that water usage is indeed up, but whether that is due to the added light intensity or the water table continuing to drop, is still an unknown. More experiments will be done to see if added light intensity in the future equates to automatically using more water, and I think it is a combination of both factors in this case.

A very interesting and informative journal, regardless of the grow method used by the reader. I really appreciate your attention to detail.

I'll bet on you finding that light intensity has a great deal to do with water uptake. I found that with my new lights, my water uptake increase by at least 50%, and in one case over 100%.

This could easily be caused by the root system expanding faster with the better light until they fill the final container (pot). It has continued during the first two weeks after the stretch (all I have data for). Did I get a denser root mass? I don't know, and will check after harvest. At this point the stems are twice the diameter of those in my previous grows. I had never seen a 1" (25mm) diameter stem in my indoor grows before. That's now my smallest.

 

[Emilya Green]

Joyce says that the world should work together to keep calculators out of my hands. I beg to differ, because without my careful analytics, I never would have seen this:
My oldest plant (by 1 day) needs to be watered. I didn't see an exponential increase in water use overnight, but it was a significant increase compared to some of the rest of the plants on the table. This precocious one increased water usage to 1.04ml/hr overnight, a 19% increase! The rest of the plants, where water has not yet reached scarcity, have increased too due to the increased light intensity, but not nearly as much and none of their water use has yet come back to the 1ml/hr threshold. The two middle plants experienced the least gain due to the light at a 1% and 6% increase, and still using water at a rate of only .78 and .82 ml/hr. The smallest two also experienced a large gain of 14% at .8ml/hr and the runt trying hard to catch up at 27% increase at .69ml/hr!

 

[Old Salt]

Joyce says that the world should work together to keep calculators out of my hands.

Oh No! Not back to pencil and paper! Most under twenties now couldn't follow.

 

[Emilya Green]

DSCF7141.JPG

• Emilya Green
• Jul 27, 2019

Berry D'licious 2019 first proper watering

Adding this one to the Gallery instead of just attaching it. Curious if the quality of the picture changes, but other than that, just documenting the first proper watering of the run. The outside edges are now the wettest places in the cup, which now weighs in at just under 1 pound. Even though growth right now is crazy ridiculous, I actually expect to see a growth spurt and increased water usage.
On that... water usage can probably also be equated to how many active leaves are on the plant too.

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg, Day 9
Today was an interesting day in the garden, where nothing went as predicted. First, water use was slightly down across the table, with one major exception. Three more plants (the next three above the ground) were light enough to water (feel light, scale says there is around 70ml of water in there) and they got watered this evening too. The last two are another day behind and I expect them to need attention tomorrow.
I am not seeing anything that I can measure that says it is time to water, like exponential water use near the end. It was a cute theory, but I do not see it happening.
What did happen however was a growth spurt, or more closely described as a growth explosion today in our first born and first properly watered. This plant practically doubled its leaf surface area today and water use went up 61% to a yet unseen record of 1.94 ml/hr! This one is massive compared to its siblings at the moment, and it is going to be fun to see the next 3 do the same thing over the next 12 hours.
Wow this growth is rapid under this 24/0 light! Note that this is node 4 popping up right now, and when this one opens up and we start seeing node 5, it is going to be time to top this little monster. It is remarkable to me that this is all happening in less than 2 weeks. We really need to rethink veg lighting.

 

[fanleaf]

Wow this growth is rapid under this 24/0 light! Note that this is node 4 popping up right now, and when this one opens up and we start seeing node 5, it is going to be time to top this little monster. It is remarkable to me that this is all happening in less than 2 weeks. We really need to rethink veg lighting.

I have no idea because I have been with these lights for so long now. I do know that it's always my goal to top all of my plants above the 4th node before day 14 from the day the seedling popped up from soil. Is that unusual? I really don't know at this point. I like to grab the stem with one hand and with the other hand just bend and snap off above the 4th as very soon as I can get my fingers in there. Seems to never slow them a bit just snapping it off like a green bean. Myself, I dont like to let the plant grow above the 4th node at all before I snap it. In my eyes letting it get well formed above the 4th is a waste of time when we can make the plant focus on the 2 new tops sooner. Just my .02 anyways. I top between day 10 and 14 plant depending.
I like your light intensity at this point. I'm usually a tad harder on the plants as far as that goes. I would be raining down a minimum of 800umol/s or around 20k I think it would roughly be. I like your approach though and I can tell you are having a "blast" experimenting with the complete flexibility these lights offer. Especially when you start customizing your spectrum at different points in the grow. Yes, some LED's have "bloom" and "veg" switches but turning one of those switches off kills the intensity. With these setups you can keep the intensity the same because turning down one portion of the spectrum you can turn up the other to make up for lost photons. Fun fun!

 

[Emilya Green]

This morning brings us some more numbers, and things are starting to make more sense. Also, within just a few hours it is obvious that the Revive has had a positive effect, and the color of the 4 plants so far first watered has improved, the leaves have thickened, and as we saw yesterday with our first one, an explosion of growth has happened in the widening and lengthening of all of the leaves. We have to assume that the very same thing is happening with the roots, and we can see expansion in the water usage.
All plants are showing increased usage this morning, even the runt who is now showing 1ml/hr and who will need watering tomorrow at best guess. The two that needed watering last night have increased water usage to 1.28 and 1.44 ml/hr and the one that was watered that really didn't need it yet also increased to .8ml/hr. Part of this is due to the added lumens, but part of it has to do with an increase in the root system. Actually last night I turned down the lights a tad, as all the leaves except for on our firstborn were in full flaps up configuration... they just looked like they were stressing, and we have settled back in at a balmy 16,500 LUX for now. I will try edging back up in a couple of days as we are now at the low end of suggested LUX for Veg.
So far, the strongest correlation that can be seen in these numbers is that large water use equates directly to strong growth.

 

[SQl2kGuy]

This morning's weigh in showed a fairly consistent 1ml/hr water usage overnight and while I didn't measure the vertical height, it seems that my tallest one has stretched a little more, or the massive 3 day leaf growth just got too heavy to hold up yet, and the plant had starting listing to the leeward side. I mounded up some soil around the trunk on this one and the other tall one to keep the stalk in place as it continues to get stronger. There is an oscillating fan on the table with the plants, and this will also help them get stronger. On the first proper watering I will be adding some aloe juice so that the silicone can help strengthen the plants although I think they would be fine without it. I will also be adding the first application of Recharge to these young plants on that first true watering, but at the current water usage we are still several days away from that. I expect that in that time we will see more roots develop and water use will double. This 24/0 light is doing some amazing things and I suspect that I will not be vegging as long as I had planned so as to be able to fill up a 2x4 SCROG.
Speaking of which, I have decided to "farm out" the construction of my screen this time, and I believe I can get one of my sweetie's coworkers at the Lowe's store to custom build a 2x4 aluminum window screen for me. Instead of screen, I plan on creating a mesh out of heavy test fishing line and stringing the screen frame like a tennis racket by drilling the appropriate holes all around the edges. I think this design will be light as well as strong enough to maintain the plants horizontally, and I should be able to keep it at the right height by attaching it by the corners to the 4 vertical tent supports in a secure manner. Has anyone else tried this? Is a 4' run of aluminum screen frame going to be strong enough to hold this thing up? I guess I could have them make a panel with a divider in the middle if I needed additional support or I could add in something afterward. I want this SCROG screen to hold up for a while and become my standard way of working in this 2x4 tent.

Hi @Emilya ... I hope you're enjoying your weekend!

When I first started growing I was researching and experimenting with 24-0, 20-4 and 18-6. I finally settled on 4 cycles of 5-1 to take advantage of the dark period for rest, light saturation and other normal processes which I thought only happen in the dark.

With anyone's experience here ... does anyone think that photoperiod cannabis can be driven successfully from seedling to flower with 24-0? Or do you plan on giving some dark periods later on in veg?

***

I really like the 2'x4' frame idea ... and I may actually do that with individual strands.

What dimensions are you planning for the squares?

I added individual strands to 6"x6" and wound up with 3"x3" this time. I like that I can slide the individual strands back and forth to fine tune holding back growth nodes.

***

I am currently doing some seedlings and will need to transplant a few more times. I read your response and @irie lion 's response in another thread ... and I would prefer fewer roots on the outside instead of lots of roots.

Does anyone here have an opinion on how much root mass to have on the outside before transplanting?

And has anyone cut the root mass with a knife down the edge before putting it into the new pot?

***

I am so new to gardening ... and it has become a passion!!!

I have so many questions ... and such a keen interest in improving my skills or at least developing my own groove that works for me and my medicine

PS ... almost forgot ... how is M&M doing?

 

[Emilya Green]

When I first started growing I was researching and experimenting with 24-0, 20-4 and 18-6. I finally settled on 4 cycles of 5-1 to take advantage of the dark period for rest, light saturation and other normal processes which I thought only happen in the dark.

With anyone's experience here ... does anyone think that photoperiod cannabis can be driven successfully from seedling to flower with 24-0? Or do you plan on giving some dark periods later on in veg?

It is my belief after watching this annoying Auto phenomenon going on around us that there is nothing magical about the super fast growth of Autos... They are simply run with more daylight hours than normal photo plants. This made me commit to the experiment I am doing in this grow, going all through Veg at 24/0. It would be incongruent for me to believe in one of my primary adages that whilst in Veg our plants adapt to anything that is thrown at them, and not believe that they can also adapt to not having a dark period. So far, I am seeing incredibly fast development on these plants and I am fully doubting that I will need to stay in Veg for the full 2 months that I was planning going into this grow... I believe they are going to fill up my 2x4 screen way before that time.

 

[Emilya Green]

I really like the 2'x4' frame idea ... and I may actually do that with individual strands.

What dimensions are you planning for the squares?

I added individual strands to 6"x6" and wound up with 3"x3" this time. I like that I can slide the individual strands back and forth to fine tune holding back growth nodes.

My last SCROG was done with 1.5" holed chicken wire and I really liked how that worked. I tried 4" holes one time and hated it, and totally lost vertical control and a resulting even canopy. The smaller holes require more time training, but the extra effort is well worth the trouble at the end. I fully expect to pull a pound of dried pot off of this screen.

 

[Emilya Green]

I am currently doing some seedlings and will need to transplant a few more times. I read your response and @irie lion 's response in another thread ... and I would prefer fewer roots on the outside instead of lots of roots.

Does anyone here have an opinion on how much root mass to have on the outside before transplanting?

And has anyone cut the root mass with a knife down the edge before putting it into the new pot?

I carefully watch the wet/dry cycle and transplant (especially with the 24/0 accelerated growth) as soon as the container drains in 24-48 hours the first time. This usually corresponds to the point when multiple feeder roots have hit the outside and will soon start to wrap. If I had one that had started to wrap on the sides or the bottom, by all means I would now slice those roots to send them in the 5 directions upon transplant.

 

[Emilya Green]

... almost forgot ... how is M&M doing?

Just starting to thrive... she is the runt that I refer to often these days. I think tomorrow she will get her first proper watering and will join her siblings officially as a Vegging plant and no longer a seedling.