Day 42 Update
I wanted to try and type this out last night. Once you see what all took place, you'll understand why I chose to wait until today.
Today at lights on the plants will be on day 43 from seed.
As I said before,
1/15/23 will be day 1 of 12/12.
This will put us exactly 7 weeks from seed. 6 weeks of veg if you count 1 week as germ/seedling stage.
Its wild to think about how much has happened in 43 days. Not only with the grow but with life.
These plants really help to keep you grounded in the day to day, stop me from worrying so much of the future and stressing so much about the past.
Anyway....
As we prepare for flower, I wanted to make sure not only the plants were ready to support big buds but so was our environment.
I stated how we were using old shelving racks to lift the tents off the concrete. This served its purpose for a while, as we focused on other things the grow needed.
This is our last weekend of Veg and we needed to make sure we got everything as dialed in as possible, so we can leave them as uninterrupted as possible through flower.
Took a few measurements and made a trip to the Depot. I considered just reinforcing my shelves when I saw the price of lumber
JK but Geez! I thought of so many cool upgrades I could've bought instead.
Although I have to admit this upgrade was necessary and came out pretty clean.
I won't bore you all with the complete tutorial. As I'm sure you can find much better examples of how to skin this cat.
But essentially, it's just (3) 2'x4'x12' and a bunch of 2'x4'x15" as the base and the cheapest most flat plywood I could find to give us a flat surface.
It is just a 12x3 platform and allows me to place all the tents on it with plenty of space in between each tent.
In order to accomplish this, I had to remove the plants from the tent, disconnect the tents and move them out of the way. With the plants out of the tent and no scrubbers running the garage was pungent!
I also took the time to realize how much the garden has grown. It's crazy until you see something from a different angle you don't realize the magnitude of something that's been right in your face the entire time!
In the end tho it was worth the effort. It came out very clean and gives us flat ground to work on.
It's a miracle we have the results we do with the magic carpet of support we've been using
Something so simple can make such a difference.
I have some scrap pieces left that I plan on making an extension piece that I can move in front of the tent I’m working on and place the plants on as well.
The 2x4 has a 1 ft edge in front of it.
The removable piece will be 1 ft as well and serve as a shelf for the other tents that go right to the edge.
The plants were very dry. The water I put in 2 days prior was GONE.
@Keffka
This is what I meant when I said I would touch on having found my rhythm.
I kinda figured they didn’t get enough water. I also had the date chosen for flipping to flower.
I knew I wanted to transplant them to 3 gal before flower and give them enough time to get comfortable before the flip so we could go into it on the trending side of things.
When I decided to back off and not give them more, this was with a bit of anticipation in mind. Knowing I would want them dry to transplant. Giving them more water the next day would have meant they wouldn’t be dry until the middle of this week and they would only have a couple of days at most to bounce back from a transplant.
I gave them just enough to hold them over and by yesterday they were dry again.
This was perfect! I purchased another bag of LUSH another 3g pot as I was 1 short and a bottle of a wetting agent called coco wet.
Apparently wetting agents are popular in the dry climate here so I was lucky to find it
I was rushing and didn’t get time to grab an aloe plant, but I do plan on it.
I plan on grabbing a few non cannabis plants to grow alongside them for when there’s not much to do.
I hate idle hands.
I transplanted the
PBK2 and both
PGC to 3gal pots.
Unfortunately, by the time I was doing this it was already very late, and nothing was open.
While going through the motions of a transplant I started reaching around for my mycos and remembered I used the last of it when transplanting Suzanne.
I hate that I didn’t dust the bottoms because there are proven benefits to doing so.
This entire grow the root growth has been phenomenal across the entire garden.
I credit that to going a tad overboard with the myco than I would have normally done in the past.
And I still believe we can do better!
As you can see the roots took over the perlite layer, so I loosened that layer up a bit before dropping them in.
I would have loved cover those in myco! I thought about it and couldn't afford to wait for a transplant they needed water.
If it is that serious, I can buy some more and water it in later per the application directions on the side.
They were then watered in with Cal/mag PH to 6.3. I have this down to muscle memory now.
- Add and stir Cal/mag
- Smoke weed
- Stir again
- Smoke more weed
- 3 drops of PH up & stir
- Test 6.3 like clockwork
- Smoke again
While watering I had the thought, "I'm so glad I'm transitioning my garden to SIPs".
The length of time it takes to make sure you get it right and the pain it puts on my body to do a garden that is ever expanding is a lot.
Eventually I do want to have veggies and such and would much rather the Cannabis to be as automated as possible to ensure consistency.
Here they are lined up after transplant just before watering.
I will build the platform to allow this same effect in front of the other tents and an entire 2 feet in front of the 2x4.
This little step helps so much in getting back to the plants and having a step to support when I reach in.
I got water to the bottom of the pots and stopped it took WAY TO LONG to put into perspective how slow I went.
I really wanted to make sure I wet the entire pot and had no dry spots.
This is also why I picked up a wetting agent to make sure I was able to get full saturation since the soil was so dry and a bit hydrophobic.
After watering them, I placed them back in the tent after a long night and left them be.
They started to get that transplant overwatering droop when I peaked in before lights out. I am yet to take pictures today but don't expect them to be snapped out of it just yet.
This is also why I did this yesterday instead of waiting until 3 days before the flip.
They "should" be ready to go and drinking their pots by the time we go into flower, at which point we won't be letting the pots get so dry. So, giving them their 1st flower feeding at next feed will still be just about right.
The humidifer is off and will be coming out of the tent soon. After watering the humidity is kinda of high and we want to start lowering it as we go into flower anyway.
This will open but the last bit of floor space for them so they can stretch comfortably.
I have a few more pictures from last night I'm going to post up just to encapsulate all we saw last night and why were on cloud 420 as we go into this next phase.
Thank you for your time as always and thank you for stopping by!
I love how they are looking so happy 
.. fine grow 
I can’t wait to see how it all turns out for you!
I'll sort my garden first thing in morning so their set for a couple of days but after a lootz update the tents open again.
that is definitely not the process I imagined 