OK sorry; haven't been around for a while. Stuff goin on etc...
Having a few issues with the plants, nothing major... The Atomic has been getting a few burnt leaf tips and some other general non-good looking symptoms. Nothing catastrophic, but enough to concern me.. Also, the SOG has also been looking a bit yellow, esp. in the LED light when I first open the door at lights on.... CHMOG has been looking a bit over-watered also but is fine now...
Some pics..
Here is the SOG, in and out of LED.
The Atomic... Shoulda got more. A lot were blurry, so deleted..
As I say, nothing too bad. I think I definitely overfed, so I flushed all of them the other day. And after a LOT of stressing and research, and a good chat with Deprivation on another thread, I have decided that the cold is causing lockout. In desperation, I even checked pH!!! I was so concerned, that I tested pH 4 ways!!!!!! Using: 1) Cheap pH pen. 2) Cheap soil probe. 3) pH strips, and 4) Soil pH kit.
The strips are a pain, cos mine are yellow and it's really hard to match colours. The pen I don't trust, cos it's kinda all over the place, even after calibration. The probe.... is cheap. The soil test kit is probably the most accurate but again, the colours are hard to read...
All in all, though, they average out to a pH of 6.5-7.5 Probe and pen giving me 6.8-7. 7 is getting toward the high side (measured run-off while flushing) but not out of control for soil, I reckon. My tap and rainwater both come in at about 7, which is fine for me. I don't wanna add anything to 'up' or 'down' it. Tap water is pretty good quality here, so I usually aerate it for chlorine..
So pH not the problem, IMO but was still having these leaf issues: bit of blotching looking like mag or P def., possibly K def. Purple leaf stems (but then, they've all had purple stems or stripes from the start), and the SOG had what I thought was nute-burn on the tips... Loupe inspection shows sugar leaf tips going purple, not brown!
SO! My diagnosis, after literally days of googling and hair pulling, is cold temps causing lockout. And there is not much I can do about it. It's getting down to around 8C here at the moment. Very cold for here!! Thinking about hot water bottles.. I added a new circ. fan last night ( I had the plants under 2 pedestal fans for 3 hours hoping they might dry out a bit), and moved the other one to the opposite side, so now I have two in there. I installed new PC fans in anticipation of the scrubber-mod (still waiting on the final parts), so hopefully better circulation will increase Co2 in the cab; I also moved the lights down about 50mm to try and get some warmth a bit closer to the pots..
The GTH and CHMOG seem to be immune to these problems. GTH looks great. CHMOG, as I said, was looking a bit water l logged, but is fine. I will definitely change how I water. I usually soak then dry, but with the cold, the plants aren't using it, so no more of that. Litre at a time from now on..
Buds are all still growing; I feel like they aren't stacking as fast as they should be right now, and they are definitely not drinking as much as they should be, although they are growing; another reason why I'm positive it's the cold doing the damage...
OK enough about that... Here's a few more photos of buds. Check out the GTH.....
I'm hoping that this cold is not going to do much damage other than slowing things down a bit. If lockout is occurring, and I reckon it is, then I'm not sure how to go about getting nutes up in there... Any advice? No room for any kind of heater. I thought of pulling them out into the sun.. But no-where to hide them and the sun is out in their night-time anyway. Don't want hermies...
Yes I do have a thermometer/hygrometer in there but.... It is also cheap! I'm a tight-arse, what can I say. Anyone recommend a good therm/hygrom that's under $20/30? Or even just over that..
My cheap one also doesn't seem to like the cold.. Min/Max temps/humidity is 0/99%, so no good there. It's also telling me my min temp is 10.1 but I think that's as low as it goes.. Max is around 24C, so at least that's fine!
Cheers!