and did some pretty good defoliating. They have bounced back tremendously.
If you didn't defoliate, they wouldn't need to "bounce" back. What you did was stunt the plants growth. You lost probably a few days of vertical growth and node development, and would actually have a bigger plant.
Good luck! I've thought about doing exactly that but have managed to restrain myself so far. . .
Restrain yourself from defoliation! Theres no need for it, and does no good for your plant. Plants need their leaves for photosynthesis. People think its to open up the bud sites. But what "bud sites" are there when the plant is producing no bud?
I will follow along.. it seems that new growers on the forum here are getting nothing but crappy advice on defoliation and other things!
I applaud you for taking the plunge into cannabis growing, but your first mistake was choosing to grow in a DWC set up. With you already battling high room temps, you are now battling high water temps too. As a precaution and a preventative, i would
HIGHLY suggest picking up Botanicare's Hydroguard. It will help prevent pythium (root rot). I would also highly suggest AGAINST using any sort of h2o2 or sterilization product, as a sterile environment does not always stay sterile, and is a haven for the bad bacteria.
If you could (since you're early on in the game) get a growing method that takes the roots out of the water. This way, water temperature wont be an issue, also, maintaining adequates amount of dissolved Oxygen (DO) wont be an issue either as your roots wont be sitting in a nutrient solution.
If you are hell bent on growing in DWC, with your temperatures, you are either going to need to purchase an portable AC to cool the grow tent down, which will in turn keep the water temps down too, or buy a water chiller.
My suggestion, would be to scrap the DWC buckets and the hydroton. Purchase some rockwool grow cubes (1cmx1cmx1cm) and grow the plant like a soil plant. In a pot, with the rockwool cubes as your medium, and water it by hand (hand water during veg only) every day. Transplant up from small pots, to larger pots a few times and then into a large, final flowering container. During veg you can re-use the nutrient solution, but i suggest watering to waste, meaning you dont re-use the water you just fed your plants. Make sure that you have at least 25-50% of the container size worth of run-off. So a 2gal container, you want about 1/2-3/4gal of run off when you water.. if you have house plants, or a yard, use the run off on the house plants or the grass, so you still some use out of it..
During flower, its much more automated. A water pump will do your watering during flower, and during this phase, you will recirculate the nutrient solution for one week before replacing the nutrient solution. you can irrigate as many times a day as you want, as it is impossible to over-water plants in rockwool. the flowering station will look like this:
Thats a hydro halo drip ring, but you can make the same thing with some 1/2" PVC for half the price of a Hydro Halo.
with an extended veg time of 8ish weeks, and then putting a plant on one of these systems, you can easily reach yields of 14zips per plant or more, under only a 600w HPS! you have a 1000w, you could get about a 25% increase in yield with this same method.
This is only a suggestion!! If you would like the difficult challenge with DWC growing, you're on the right path thats for sure. But if you would like some more information about this method of growing, feel free to message me on any one of my journals, or send me a PM.
PS, i have done a share of DWC growing, and its just a headache. Great growth rates in veg, but you can achieve that with a top feed system as well!
I wish you all of the luck i can find! i'll be lurking around!
. Hydroton, auto flowers, even the same size pots by the look of things. With the understanding that I really have no experience with this, could your use of "nutes" possibly be the problem? What kind of water are you using?
Drastic failure is a better demonstrator of fact and convincer of SWMBO. I am already seeing the benefits to other systems though and do see changes in the future. It's like any other hobby, one must sneak new stuff into the house and when questioned about it say, "oh I've had that forever". lmao
