No i do not know of a replacement for Ancient Forest, but essentially you could supplement your crop with any high quality humic acid supplement. I was using Floralicious plus because it contained humic acid as well as seaweed, plus its supposed to increase resin and essential oil production and increase flavour.
I have since stopped brewing any teas, and simply use the Subcultures alternating each day. Its simply put, less hassle than treating my water for chlorine, brewing a tea for 36 hours and then applying it, and i'm sure its just as effective as the tea i was brewing up.
The thing with hydroponics, is theres so many applications of the word. Ebb&flow, Recirculating top feed, DWC, RDWC, aeroponics. All have different ways of suspending the plant and roots in medium and delivering nutrient solution.
That being said, each method has their ways of delivering microbes to the root zone. RDWC and DWC i think are just kind of pointless to try and "inoculate" your reservoir although If you are growing DWC like myself and have your plants in rockwool cubes as the medium in the net pots, then you surely can inoculate your root ball.
I normally grow in a recirculating top feed system, where i have no worries of high ppm solutions harming or killing the microbes being put into the growing medium, since the nutrient solution drains back into the reservoir. I irrigate once a day, right when the lights come on for the day, and i add my M or B sometime around noon or so as a root drench. My roots have never been whiter. When i dont apply the beneficials daily, my roots aren't as white and my plants dont grow as vigorously.
I'm trying my hardest to get some Great White or Recharge sent up to me here in BC, but thanks to Agriculture Canada's strict regulations on horticultural products like that, those products, as well as Ancient Forest, are not allowed into Canada. I'm contemplating having a friend in the states buy some for me and mail it to me and hope for the best!!
About the pythium, try and find some Aquashield or Hydroguard from Botanicare. The specific strain of Bacillus bacteria within Hydroguard (Bacillus Amyloliquefaciens) is very effective against pythium. That (Aquashield) got rid of my pythium when i first started growing,. Botanicare has since changed the formula slightly and renamed it to Hydroguard.
From that point on, i have always maintained a live environment within my reservoirs or root zones, as a sterile environment in your res or root zone is much harder to maintain, and usually invites anaerobic bacteria into your root zone or reservoir. I've never had any root issues since starting using beneficial bacteria
Hey everyone.. its been awhile for an actual update.. i have better things to do than sit here on 420, and thats care for my plants.
That being said.. remember how i said i was going to give that Twilight LED that i have another chance? what a waste of time!!
The Pink Kush under that Twilight LED has been in 12/12 for 17 days now, and it has done nothing but get a little bit bigger!! Its just finally putting out pistils, whereas the Pink kush under my HPS are in full bud production and are HUGE!
No worries folks!! I'm just waiting for the place where i get my lights and tents and such to receive their shipment of ballasts so that i can get another 600w CoolTube package for the 4x4 tent, although i'm thinking of getting one of their air cooled hoods instead of a Cooltube, as they might have a slightly bigger footprint.
Once i get back from my Vegas trip in June, i plan to upgrade all my reflectors in my flower tent from Cooltubes to Magnum XXXL air cooled hoods.
I recently moved my AC outside of the tent and have it situated to blow directly inside.
This is proving to be much more effective as the AC was sucking in hot air before, and trying to cool it before blowing it out. This was causing the AC to actually overwork itself, and constantly freeze up the condensate pump, which would in turn need to stop cooling the air and defrost the pump before trying to cool down the hot air again. It basically rendered my AC useless while it was inside the tent. Now it sucks in cool air and can actually cool it before it is blown out of the AC.
The difference is night and day. Its almost too cold to go into the tent to do any work on the plants haha! I'm kidding, but the temps were hitting 26-28 on my hygrometer, but now the temps read around 18 degrees constantly. For me running DWC without chillers on my totes, thats a game changer! My temps are absolutely perfect at the moment. I'm expecting huge amounts of purple to come out in this particular harvest.
SO heres some pictures of how things are shaping up here!
My Blueberry Headband that i germinated around new years is slowly coming along, despite the description of the strain stating it was a vigorous growing plant in veg. I have determined that i have gotten an incredibly indica-dominant phenotype. The plant is so short and squat, and the fan leaves are small, but very thick leaves. It already stinks to high hell. A very hashy, diesly scent to it with some slight undertones of red berries. The scent is extremely narcotic and intoxicating.
Heres the Pink Kush under the Twilight LED. Once this plant gets a 600w HPS over top of it, I estimate it will stretch at least 4 inches, but i have a scrog built and ready to suspend over the plant to keep the colas away from the HPS light.
Looking at pictures of it from 10 days ago, it has actually doubled in size, however, the extremely low powered LED light is having a really hard time growing any sort of buds, and the penetration is absolutely piss poor.
And heres a few random shots of the flower tent that i took either last night before lights out, or this morning when the lights came on... I cant really remember, but who really cares?
This is my runt of the Pink Kush plants i have in this tent:
Heres the only OG Kush i have in flower at the moment, off in the corner there. This particular pheno is a huge yielder. This plant should exceed 16zips dry, and it turns an amazing shade of purple when the flush begins. Added with the 10 degree cooler temps i can provide with my AC being outside the tent, this plant should turn pure purple by harvest day.
a couple random shots of the larger Pink Kush plants in flower:
And heres the newest strains being added to circulation. On the left are an unknown Purple kush from bagseed, and on the right are Reserva Privada Strawberry Banana's. I recently set up one of my 2x4 flood tables for these plants. I have them directly in 1gals whereas i would have normally put the rockwool cubes into a 4" square pot.
And that's it guys. Really not a whole lot. Just waiting for these plants to flower out so i can harvest! Hope everyones gardens are flourishing!
happy growing!
