In The Lab

RainStacks said:
Looking great Doc! I am so excited to set up an indoor grow so I can try out the Brix. I am currently growing 6 plants outdoors from seed. I am growing in Ocean Forrest with DM red and WC. I started on a whim very late in the season(I started at the beginning of the month) here in Southern California. I understand that your kit is optimized for Pro mix hp which has been amended/cooked with elements from the kit. My question is: would I benefit from using any of the other elements which you prescribe such as foliar feedings for my current grow? Or would I be better off just thinking of this first grow as a learning experience to familiarize myself with the plants themselves? I hope I am asking you this in the right place? I appreciate all the passion and work you put into this. I am learning a ton. Thank's so much Doc!
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I'm in much the same position. I have a couple plants in FFOC with OC+, and 5 more in mineralized Pro-Mix (Doc's pre-kit recommendation from his Strawberry Cough thread). I've been spraying the OC+ plants with brix and stress with the rest and they seem to like it just fine. I recently treated the mineralized plants with cationic drench, and I'm not sure I like what happened - their bottom fans went yellow and I got some pistil browning. Doc warned me against using his stuff on a different soil formulation than he recommends.

Experimentation can be good, though. I wanted to get a feel for the foliars and drenches before I started the True High Brix grow - just a week or two away now. The mineralized plants do like the foliars - I'm seeing positive results after treating them.
 
RainStacks said:
Looking great Doc! I am so excited to set up an indoor grow so I can try out the Brix. I am currently growing 6 plants outdoors from seed. I am growing in Ocean Forrest with DM red and WC. I started on a whim very late in the season(I started at the beginning of the month) here in Southern California. I understand that your kit is optimized for Pro mix hp which has been amended/cooked with elements from the kit. My question is: would I benefit from using any of the other elements which you prescribe such as foliar feedings for my current grow? Or would I be better off just thinking of this first grow as a learning experience to familiarize myself with the plants themselves? I hope I am asking you this in the right place? I appreciate all the passion and work you put into this. I am learning a ton. Thank's so much Doc!
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I think you're better of using the kit exactly as you're supposed to, rather than trying to work with your current grow.

Of course, you could always add the 6-5-3 stuff.....but you'd be buying large sacs of stuff that you might not use again.....

DM is a great fertilizer....you should do very well with it!
 
RainStacks said:
Graytail- thank's so much for taking the time to share your experience with me. Best of luck with your current grow and your High Brix coming up! If you journal it I will certainly follow.

Doc- I will take your advice and wait until I can go all in with the kit. I will live vicariously through you until then.
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Then I'll have to start taking pictures again.....:bong: There's been some positive developments with the champagne, Lemon Paki, OG and GSC. C99 might not make it till the weekend......really underperforming.

Anyways, this is the "lab" thread, so why am I talking about this? Because I think culling plants that aren't working out is a very therapeutic thing to do! I have a natural aversion to doing so, because like so many other starry eyed hobby growers, I tend to personalize my plants, although much less now that in times past.

When a cutting or strain isn't working out, yank it. It's taking up space. Grow whatever you can grow the best. Get the garbage out of the rotation.
 
RainStacks said:
I look forward to seeing the pics! I don't think I could cull a plant. I am the kind of guy that catches spiders and puts them outside. I will have to harden my heart ;).
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Ah....but spiders are sentient beings. I can't kill them so easy either. But I'm also a fan of self defense and I practice the non-aggression principle.

So, if I find black widows....I test them. Will they stay down there if I stick my hand in to turn on the sprinklers? Or, will they bite?

If I think they're gonna bite....they're dead.

I found some baby lizards running around the warehouse today.....They are most welcome. But underperforming plants? Nope!

I'm gonna cull two more tomorrow and put some Lemon Paki in their place.
 
I saw a documentary once about people who had been bitten by black widows. They all said it was the most painful, excruciating, agonizing tortuous experience of their lives. They all seemed to suffer for at least a couple weeks. Every one of them became phobic of black widows afterward. I also kill them if I find them. Does a spider have to have feelings or be introspective/aware of its own existence to be sentient? I thought I knew what it meant; describing chimps whales etc...but I looked it up and what I found just confused me more ha ha. I need to learn more about Buddhism to get it I think.

Any updates or pics for us coming soon Doc? :Namaste:
 
tavosvo said:
sprayed the insect and disease spray today wow that stuff smells gnarly like old oil that was used to fry some fish! Very fish oil fishy smell - my girl seemed to like it though she standing nice and tall!
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Did you have a need to spray with that?

It is a combination of horticultural oils and fishy ferts. It will wash off the leaves, kill all the bugs AND feed the plant at the same time.

I haven't had a need to use it yet....but I did completely drench several plants with it a few times to make sure it didn't hurt anything. They got very, very shiny.
 
Doc Bud said:
Did you have a need to spray with that?

It is a combination of horticultural oils and fishy ferts. It will wash off the leaves, kill all the bugs AND feed the plant at the same time.

I haven't had a need to use it yet....but I did completely drench several plants with it a few times to make sure it didn't hurt anything. They got very, very shiny.
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My girl is gonna make a move to a tent, and there were some leaf miners on her, and fungus gnats on a couple of OC+ clones I'm running..figured it wouldn't hurt, .8ml in 3.4 oz of water pretty sure i did the conversion right?! I think it's .24ml/oz..

Holy crap shiny is right!
 
Doc, I just started a journal on my home forum, an autoflower predominant board...is it okay to cross post in here? Running 2 Ace Congo (F) and 3 Ace Purple Haze x Meao Thai (Reg). They are in 1.5g square pots under a 270w LED.
 
lowandslow said:
Doc, I just started a journal on my home forum, an autoflower predominant board...is it okay to cross post in here? Running 2 Ace Congo (F) and 3 Ace Purple Haze x Meao Thai (Reg). They are in 1.5g square pots under a 270w LED.
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Bigger pots bro! Doc recommends 7 gal reg pot or 5 gal smart/air pot at the minimum!

Don't do what I did and go too small!
 
lowandslow said:
I have a 10g smart pot and a "10g equivalent" air pot...I may try to wedge both into my tent and see what works better side by side with clones...
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I like that! I've wondered myself which is better. Airpots need patience to water, but are more sturdy. Fabric pots easy to water and much easier to do a deep root soak as dirt won't come shooting out the holes when you pull the pot out.

Doc, someone else was using airpots in veg and they made a comment concerning root mass before transplant. A regular pot will root bind and have a bigger root mass going into flower, and therefore is superior? 've always thought that the fine roots smart/air pots make are better. Does it make a difference?
 
tavosvo said:
I like that! I've wondered myself which is better. Airpots need patience to water, but are more sturdy. Fabric pots easy to water and much easier to do a deep root soak as dirt won't come shooting out the holes when you pull the pot out.

Doc, someone else was using airpots in veg and they made a comment concerning root mass before transplant. A regular pot will root bind and have a bigger root mass going into flower, and therefore is superior? 've always thought that the fine roots smart/air pots make are better. Does it make a difference?
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Everything makes a difference of some sort.....

I like to have lightly root bound plants when I transition to bloom. Pent up energy in the plant....not root bound to the point where things start to shut down and get unhealthy....but root bound to where the plant is eager to stretch out and is very healthy.

1-2 gallon pots seem to work very well for this.

I LOVE fabric pots outdoors, but prefer hard ones inside. That doesn't mean I'm right....it's just kinda how I do things. Either style of pot will work.

I do love the idea of bottom watering in a fabric pot on a flood table....and I want to do that....but can't find the time just yet with all the other stuff I have going all the time.
 
Got a question:

I'm starting to accumulate used first-round kit soil, and I've been keeping it in its own bin. I also have another 30 gallons of kit soil cooking. When that's ready, I'll be using it for each new pot, over time, not all at once.

I'm wondering if it would necessarily be a bad idea to mix the used soil in with the new soil. I'd add amendment and mix it up, and then dump it in with the rest and mix that up. All the roots and biota from the chopped plant would go into the new soil and blend with the rest. It seems like that would benefit both batches.

It's somewhat bad discipline, I suppose - end up mixing any pathogens - but you also mix beneficials.

Bad idea?
 
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