Doug Varin... really, do you still have some? Can you point me to smoke report?
Re the discussion over SIPs
Do you let the water wick up into the pot for a certain amount of time before putting a seed in the soil, pre-wetting as it were?
Yes. Capillary action is very fast and powerful. Next day, 12 hrs you are good.
In a system using synthetic nutes, when would you start adding nutrients to the res as opposed to feeding nutes with the second set of leaves? And if you were to only mix nutes 4-5 times per cycle, how would you decide what strength would they be?
The only plants I've seeded directly into SIPs were tomatoes. I also cloned a new tomato cutting into SIPS. In the example of cannabis, I would fill rez 1/3 plain water. If we're talking promix and my tap water, which is sublimely good at 0-10ppm and ph 7, I would not change pH (this is my current practice with cannabis).
My personal setup is an organic/salts hybrid at the moment but we'll ignore that.
Once my seedling had a couple nodes then I'd fill rez with my salt mix.
If running a large seperate rez, meaning a limited number of mixes I would run 100% the whole way through, but for adding dry koolbloom at the end and maybe a PK boost for last rez. Not convinced terribly on those, however, I also have a decent stock of KNF and JADAM that I might drench with at flower, weekly only. I think the key there is to avoid leeching into the onboard rez.
I grow much like Green Gene and Kootsmed, those guys that run Jack's at the same mix for the entire run and will change strength to suit cultivar/pheno. I, however, run MC 2 Part which has same NPK as Jacks with second part also being calcium nitrate. Differences are you get some multiple sources for some of the elements, amino acid chelation instead of EDTA synth chelate which is rough on the greater ecosystem, more magnesium and some silica. So far so good.
My additions to the mix at time of every rez fill are 5mg/gal Epsom, Liquidirt, Kelp, fulvic.
I add live endomyco hyphae I've cultured into transplant hole or seed location at planting
After plant has settled I do a weekly liquidirt, microbe, fulvic top drench with 500ml per plant, but only after roots have settled, about 10-14 days. I make sure that when I whet my matrix at the beginning that I use a lot of these elements, everything afterward is just a recharge. I currently actively culture live mycs and microbes (separately and together) from NPK, dynomyco and others so that I have live microbial and hyphae to input instead of spores and many, many more of them per application. It's very straightforward to do and much, much more cost-effective.
Personally, I also add a small amount of aged chicken manure (1/4 cup/10 gal), wormcastings (1 cup/ 10gal), frass (1/2 cup/10gal) and some humates into my promix. Because I don't run particularly strong nutes and want to encourage some microbial and mycological life, I run this hybrid mix. I don't want my peat to start locking out/holding on to nutes in this passive system and I want to reuse it, so I complicate the picture a little. Hopefully, it also has an impact on the final product quality. I'm also very cost conscious.
Here's my MC 2 part elemental mix for SIPs,
| Element | PPM | NPK Value |
|---|
| Total Nitrogen (N) | 146.0040 | 9.20 |
| Nitrate Nitrogen (NO3-) | 139.6560 | |
| Ammonical Nitrogen (NH4+) | 6.3480 | |
| Phosphorous (P) | 55.4466 | 7.80 |
| Potassium (K) | 206.6274 | 15.60 |
| Magnesium (Mg) | 59.8458 | 3.77 |
| Calcium (Ca) | 120.6120 | 7.60 |
| Sulfur (S) | 79.0326 | 4.98 |
| Iron (Fe) | 2.8566 | 0.18 |
| Zinc (Zn) | 0.9903 | 0.06 |
| Boron (B) | 0.3714 | 0.02 |
| Manganese (Mn) | 0.6189 | 0.04 |
| Copper (Cu) | 0.3714 | 0.02 |
| Molybdenum (Mo) | 0.1238 | 0.01 |
| Silicon (Si) | 1.4283 | 0.09 |
| Total PPM | 571.3200 | |
so I went back to the way it was when I first hung them.
