My, My It's Strawberry Pie, Fast Buds Autos

[Delps8]

Time for another grow!

This grow will be Strawberry Pie autos and the will be "high light". It's taken a while, three grows and a lot of reading and viewing, to adopt that approach.

Over the course of my last grow, I finally allowed the data presented by researchers to overcome my following the CW re. light levels. It took some time (three grows and more than a year) but on day 85 of the last grow, after watching a DeBacco University video in which he displayed the same information as I've seen many times from Bugbee and Chandra, I "turned it up to 11" and used 900µmols as my target light level.

I did cut down on that a bit at the end of the grow but it was only because the tent was so full of weed that there was simply no reason to run at 320 watts. I dropped PPFD's into the mid-800's for the last month of the grow and still ended up with 729 grams. That's 947 grams per square meter so it would seem that things were going well in the tent.

One thought was that, since I'm going to do a grow with high light levels all the way through, that I should do another GG grow to try to establish some sort of baseline but, frankly, that would be pointless. There's so much variation in growing, even between plants in the same grow (Chris yielded 4 times as much as Wilma) that no baseline is possible using seeds and doing grows months apart. Add in the fact that I'm growing in a highly variable environment (a tent in an unheated garage in Southern California) and, well, the entire idea of a "baseline" falls apart.

With that in mind and, without further ado, this will be "My, my Strawberry Pie" grow and, in fact, it is already under way.

Info about the grow and the grow environment:

Strain - Strawberry Pie (autoflower), an indica autoflower from FastBuds via North Atlantic Seed Company. I've bought seeds from three vendors and think I'll continue to buy from North Atlantic. They're located in the US, they ship from the US, and I got seeds just a few days after I ordered them. That means no more CD packages from Amsterdam and no more seeds disappearing at the border. Place the order and get the goods. That works for me.

Number of Plants/Seeds - 3 seeds germinated, at least one plant will be culled
Growth Stage - seedling
How Long - put seeds in Rapid Rooters three days ago. All three are above ground, shells discarded, and doing fine.

Water source - RO
Indoor or Outdoor - indoor, unheated garage in SoCal
Grow Type - DWC

Tent - 2' x 4' Gorilla tent with extension

Reservoir - Superponics 12XL. Measures 40" x 23" x 14". 35 gals total, 28 gals usable. Will be filled to 1/2" from bottom of 3" net pots
Reservoir Temperature - 68° (Active Aqua chiller)

Nutes - Jacks 3-2-0 (not doing the "1") mixed IAW the feed schedule at 3.79-2.52. Per the approach detailed by @Farside in his thread "Growing with Bloom Nutes", I do not anticipate a change in nutrient composition over the course of the grow.
In addition to Jack's, Botanicare Silica Blast and HydroGuard will be used.

Grow Lights: Vipar Spectra CXS-1500, Chilled Growcraft X2 in veg, and Chilled Growcraft X3 for the win.
This grow is already underway with three seeds germinating and turning into healthy seedlings under the X2 in the tent in the garage. Unfortunately, life outside the garage didn't cooperate and the weather forecast is highs well into the 90's for the next week. Rather than run the AC unit and spend the next week having to deal with all of that mishigas, I moved the grow indoors this morning and am using the XS-1500 + the Rapid LED blue puck in place of the X2.

Lighting Plan
Seedling - 24/0 with a starting PPFD of 200
Veg - 20/4 with as high a PPFD as plants will support
Flower - 20/4 with as high a PPFD as plants will support

Light Meter - Apogee MQ-500 calibrated by Apogee 8/22. I'm going to buy a lux meter and use it in concert with the Apogee to see how well they correlate (betcha it's 0.0163!)

Tent Climate
Temperature - temps in the low 90's for the next few days.
When the car is parked in the garage, temps increase by about 4° and stay elevated for ≈ 3 hours.
Garage floor temp under the tent is ≈ 72 due to typical crap SoCal suburban home construction. This helps ensure that tent temps rarely drop below the low 70's.
Late in the grow, I'll use a small oil heater, if needed.

RH
The Inkbird is on the fritz and the new one will be here today. With the temps in the 90's, RH is in the 40's during the day and, despite my best efforts, RH is swinging 5% in each direction. No bueno. That will change once I get into veg, until then, RH will be a little roller coastery (new word). (Note - this has been overcome by events, per above.)


Historical Outdoor Temps
Sep - 81/61
Oct - 76/57
Nov - 69/51
Dec - 74/47


Sensors
PPFD - Apogee MQ-500, calibrated by Apogee 8/22
Air temperature - Inkbird temperature controller ("Hotbird").
RH - Inkbird RH controller ("Wetbird") plus 4" AC Infinity inline fan
pH - Bluelab monitor in the res + Bluelab pH pen if needed when making nutes
EC - Bluelab monitor in the res + Bluelab EC pen when making nutes
VPD - PulseOne

VPD values - seedling at 0.8, veg at 1.0, flower at 1.4

AC - Whynter 14000 BTU portable.
Dehumidifier - Waykar 4500 sq. ft. model

Tent fans - fixed speed 6" fans in tent top extension aimed downward is used to push warmed air at the top of the tent into the growing area.
AC Infinity variable speed fan for canopy
AC Infinity 4" inline fan
Each AC Infinity fan has its own Bluetooth controller. AC Infinity Controller Model 67 Wi-Fi is on order and will replace the Bluetooth controllers.

Kasa Smart Strips and Controllers are used to for scheduling or controlling power to all electrical devices.
The Kasa smart strips, the Inkbirds, the Wyze cameras, the Pulse, the AC Infinity fans, etc. allow remote monitoring and control via iPhone or my MacBook Air

Trellis - Scrog Pro 2' x 4'

Pests - None at the moment and intend to stay that way.

Plant Training - Plants will be topped at the fourth node on about day 21 and will be LST'd using 1/2 oz, 1 oz, and 2 oz fishing weights.

Lighting
Per my Lighting Plan, this will be a "high light" grow. My thoughts about "how much light" have changed since I started growing (again) in 2/21.

A summary:
Grow 2101 (2101 is year+grow number) - seeds germinated but seedlings were leggy and unable to support themselves. All died.

Grow 2102 - seeds germinated but seedlings were leggy and unable to support themselves. All died. Yup, pooched it again. Threw out the Kind, bought the Apogee and a Mars SP 3000.

Grow #2103 - using the Mars. Very little mention of PPFD/DLI in my journal. Some plants got as much as 700µmols. Big issue was me chasing pH. No entries in the PPFD or DLI columns.

Grow #2104 - 90-100 and DLI ≈ 9 and 6.8. Amost 20 days before I hit 20. 24 at 23 days.
9 mols at day 1
20 mols at day 19
24 mols at day 23
30 mols at day 27
34 mols at day 32
46 mols at day 44
mid 50's at 54 days
Emphasis was on pH and PPM.

Grow #2201
1 mols at day 1
12 mols at day 2
22 mols at day 4
32 mols at day 26
40 mols at day 30
50 mmolsol at day 57
60 mols at day 85
Maytag repairman grow. Res was predictable and almost always stable. No nutrient issues. Yield was excellent.

Having drunk deeply of the Bugbee Koolaid with a Chandra chaser, my motto is "900µmols or as close thereto as possible". That really rolls off the tongue, eh?

That's the data on how I've lighted my grow and how I settled on my lighting plan. Rather than follow the 45 mol figure bandied about by so many growers I've made a decision to continue to provide my plants with high levels of light. The decision is based on my previous grows which were, in turn, based on published data from leading cannabis researchers. I can't find a reason to not give my plants that much light and there's tons of research backing the idea so what took so long?

The big change from my previous grow is that I'll be at 60'ish moles much sooner than day 85 which is how long it took for my last grow. At the moment, the seedlings are at 235µmols for 24/0 so they're at 25 µmols . I'll be looking to raise that to 400 within the next few days and then up to 900µmols ASAP.

First grow with new veg light.

 

[Delps8]

Per the intro, I carefully planned the timing of this grow. I want to ensure that I don't get thrips next summer so I backwards planned and decided to get my seeds germinated on 9/1. I did the tent prep, got my Apogee in for recalibration, etc., etc. The beans went in the water, then into RR's, and the first seedling popped on 9/1.

Man plans, God laughs.

We're a couple of days into what really is a heatwave. The seeds germinated under the X2 and I wrestled with the heat and lack of RH for a couple of day but, facing a week of wrestling the RH pig*, discretion overcame valor and I moved "the grow" indoors.

I did not want to do that — I've got a brand new Growcraft X2 veg light and I wanted to use that for the entire veg cycle but a 2' by 4' bar light just would not fit anywhere in the house. The compromise was to use the Viper Spectra XS-1500 + the Rapid LED blue puck and I set that up, along with the other bare necessities, next to the desk in my office.

Yes, it does look strange but the temp has been sitting at 78° with RH at 72% for a couple of hours. Wow, that's what it's like to grow in a stable environment!

Attached pictures are from the past couple of days. Things are looking pretty good, though one of the seedlings, Flo, is a bit behind the other. Who's "Flo"? That's short for "Florence" who, along with Diana and Mary were three members of the Supremes.

Day 1 but not in the tent for long

Yeh, it's out of focus but only till you get stoned.

Temporary home. The tape holding the VPC pipe holding the light is not California earthquake approved.

*Never wrestle with a pig. The pig loves it but you just get dirty.

 

[Delps8]

I found a very interesting research paper yesterday and thought I'd pass it along.

Note - you might have picked up on the fact that I'm a believer in "big light". It's taken me over a year to get to that point but my opinion has been formed as a result of research that I've read and the results from my three grows.

Bugbee and Chandra have discussed and documented how net photosynthesis (Pn) increases as PPFD increases or, in the case of Chandra, how Pn increases based on temperature, PPFD, and CO2 levels. The underlying assumption - well, the underlying assumption that I've made - is that yield increases in concert with Pn. The slope of the curve for Pn starts to roll at about 500µmols (IIRC) so I assumed that yield would drop, as well.

My experience was seemed to be different but I had no basis analyze it, for a variety of reasons. As it turns out, while Pn may roll off, yield doesn't. In fact, yield increases on a linear basis, plant quality increases, and yield quality increases. Wow. Even more amazing is that, per the paper whose title is below, those changes continued until the PPFD limit of 1800 µmols was reached*. Double wow.

This paper makes me feel quite a bit better about "900µmols or bust!"

I can't upload PDF's so use your favorite search engine to find "Cannabis Yield, Potency, and Leaf Photosynthesis Respond Differently to Increasing Light Levels in an Indoor Environment".


*I don't know how they got cannabis to handle 1500µmols in a non-CO2 environment. That bears looking into.

 

[Delps8]

Day 9 above ground.

The seedlings are back in the tent. They're in net pots and am using an EC 0.5 strength mix of my Jack's 3-2-0 nutes. There are a lot of roots growing out of the RapidRooters but they're growing sideways, instead of down. That should change when I fill the res tomorrow.

I got the water chiller checked out today. It's functional and I rinsed it with a bleach solution. The cistern is full though warm (82°F). I considered emptying it and refilling it with fresh water but the water temp from the tap is also 82°. It's Southern California after a hot spell, go figure.

The "Heat beyond the Walls" has subsided and temps are back down into the 80's now. Temps will be 80's or there about for another few weeks and then will drop into the 70's as October approaches.

Average PPFD has been > 300 and, at 24/0, DLI has ranged from 26 to 28. It was a PITA to get PPFD measurements under the Vipar Spectra because the light level varied when I moved the sensor just a few inches. With the plants in the tent, there's very little variance with readings of 316, 307, and 321 µmols for a DLI of 27. The X2 is a little weird because it's a veg light = lotsa blue.

The leaves on the plants are light green and a couple of them were mis-shapen. Couple that with the fact that they're not very tall and I have to admit we're not off to a great start. I did have the Rapid LED blue LED running so that may have caused some problems. I'm glad that they're back in the tent and being fed by the Growcraft veg light in stead of the XS-1500.

In retrospect, I was being "pound wise and penny foolish" when I bought the X2. It was only $100 more for the X3. Sure, the X2 has lots of light but the X3 has more lots of light. The belle of the ball is the X6 but that was released after I bought my lights which is a bummer.

One DPE ("dumb programmer error") - the first time I mixed nutes for the seedlings, I screwed up one of the formulas and ended up adding 50% too much Part B. The EC for those nutes was only 0.125 so there wasn't much of anything in the mixture but I've got to believe that it didn't help things. That screw up plus with the funky looking leaves has spooked me a little bit.

[time passes]

Comparing the photos from 9/8/22 (nice and green) to the ones I took yesterday (all light green) and, yeh, I screwed up. Wow, my last grow had zero issues with nutes and yet I shoot myself in the foot right out of the gate on this grow. So much for a perfect run.

Just one photo for now, taken right after I got the plants back in the tent.

 

[Delps8]

Day 19 above ground and looks like I've got "Twins" again. One of the Strawberry Pie ("SP") seedlings was really mangled and I culled her last week. One of the two remaining seedlings is maybe ½ the size of the other.

When I saw how poorly the SP seedlings were faring, I germinated the two Gorilla Glue seeds that I had left over which give me the option to grow them in a tote until they're at veg and then bring one of them into the tent. I can get a little 5 gallon tote, then swap out the SuperSprouter and replace it with the tote. I can even trap humidity with top of the SuperSprouter.

I'll wait to see how the little SP does over the next few days.

 

[Delps8]

Day 34 above ground.

Lots has happened in the 15 days since my last posting.

Plants are Alice and Annie, names from the US Army.

Per above, I started with three seedlings, two of which had deformed leaves. One was in really bad shape so I got rid of it and germinated two Gorilla Glue seeds. One GG didn't fare well as a seedling and the second GG seedling wasn't needed either, as it turned out. Fast forward to today and I've got two Strawberry Pie seedlings that are warm and happy and doing quite well in the tent.

Nutes started out at 0.4 EC which I bumped to 1.1 about a week later. That proved a bit too hot so I backed off a bit (0.9) then up to 1.1 last week. There has been a slight drop in EC (20 PPM on the 500 scale) so I bumped to EC 1.22. In the past few days it's dropped to 1.20. pH has been dropping slowly, perhaps 0.1 units a day - very manageable. Water consumption has been consistent but over the last 24 hours 1.2 gallons has been taken up and that's been accompanied by significant growth.

Light - the plants were indoors during the heat spell (only 4 days but it was about 10 degrees above normal) and I used the Vipar Spectra XS-1500 and the blue LED for germination. I was able to get the DLI into the 20's pretty quickly and the plants responded well. Once moved to the tent, they been under the Growcraft X2 veg light and the impact of the blue-heavy spectrum has been significant.

Per the attached pictures, the plants are very short and compact. The foliage is very dense and the branches are very thick. I've been LST'ing them using fishing weights. As with trying count the nodes so that I could top the plants, it's not easy to LST the plants - the branches are short and very stiff. In the past few days, I've snapped two branches on Annie. They're taped up so I expect they'll mend but the veg light definitely changes many characteristics of the young plants.

At 34 days of age, they'll being in flower shortly and, per one of the pix, I think the first stigmas are starting to pop up. I'll swap the veg light out for the "full cycle" X3 light.

Light levels have been good. 20/4 until veg and 20/4 since then. Light data at the end. I've had two instances of light avoidance so I know that I'm pushing them pretty hard. Earlier today, I raised DLI's to 42 for Alice and 59 for Annie.

Light meter vs Apogee - I've been taking light measurements using a Uni-T light meter and my Apogee MQ-500 for both the Vipar Spectra and the X3. For both lights across PPFD's from 100 to 800µmols, the conversion factor has consistently been 0.015. I'm not trading in the Apogee but it has been handy to be able to do a check with the light meter.

Training - the plants were topped at about days 21, first Annie at node 4, then Alice at node 5. It wasn't easy to top the plants because the growth is very dense. There was no indication that topping the plants slowed growth in any way.

The AC Infinity Model 69 WiFi controller came today and I put it into service right away. The controller replaced one Bluetooth controller for their variable speed fan and a second Bluetooth controller for the inline fan. Set up was flawless.

With the fans now available on WiFi, the only item that's not on wireless now is the dimmer switch for the X3 and apparently, there will be an adapter available for that soon.

Light data:

 

[Delps8]

Day 44 above ground.

Growth - The plants are well into flower. They were short and compact but over the past few days branches are poking through the canopy and the plants have started…expanding. They're in early flower so there should be significant growth in the next week or so. I have removed the fan leaves that were fading but, once the vertical growth starts, I will check again to see what pruning is needed.

Leaf color is excellent and there have been no instances of nutrient deficiency or nute burn.

VPD has been

Lights - I switched from the veg light to the flower light about a week ago. Throughout veg, I set the light output of X2 to whatever Alice could handle and then added extra light to Annie. The difference was at most 100µmols, no more than 20% on the dimmer, and the Vipar Spectra fit comfortably in the gap between the light bars of the X2. I wasn't able to ramp up DLI as quickly as I had hoped but the plants are getting plenty of light. The only instance of light stress was when Alice got too much light in early or mid-veg.

The photoperiod is 20/4 with lights going off from 1630 to 2030. I made the change when I checked the electricity bill and found that the price for "peak demand" electricity (5 PM to 8 PM) goes from 31¢ to 64¢ per kWh. By shutting off the lights during peak demand, I'm almost $60 per month and it's a lot easier to keep VPD within range over the course of the day.

The light data is below. Alice was off to a rocky start but has recovered. She's shorter than Annie but, as of a few days ago, I upped her DLI into the 60's and she's responded well.

Nutes - Jack's has been stellar. I was using the batch of nutes that were 100:1 but that was still 660ml for each Part A and Part B so when I mixed the new batch, I went to a higher concentration. Based on the solubility data, I went to 200:1 for Part A and 400:1 for Part B. These plants had a very light green coloration so, unlike the Gorilla Glue plants, I using Epsom salts and it's mixed in with Part A. The concentrated solutions make it very easy to do a new res.

Unlike my previous grows, I've seen the classic "EC dropping, pH rising" behavior. That's surprising given the size of the reservoir (28 gallons) but for the past two weeks, I've seen TDS drop by over 100 PPM in the course of a few days. Water consumption has been over a gallon per day. Rather than top up, I've chosen to replace the res after seven days.

Equipment - The AC Infinity Controller 69 has worked out well. THe switch from individual Bluetooth controller (#76) to one controller using WiFi was very simple. WiFi not only allows me to log in using anything, anywhere but Bluetooth allows only one connection as well as being limited to a range of about 10 meters.

The trellis went in the tent today. I have a mess, bungee-cord design trellis but decided to use a trellis from scrog-pro.com. I wasn't keen on spending $60 on a trellis but, the more I looked at the design, the more I appreciated how useful it would be. Unlike standard designs, you can set up the trellis any way that you like and, when it's time to harvest, you can just unhook each of the cross pieces. It's ingenious.

In the early stages, PPFD readings taken at different locations on a plant are very similar. As the plants have grown, the readings indicate an average of the top level of the canopy. Especially in the last few days, as the plants move into flower, the canopy is becoming uneven. In terms of lighting, some parts of the plants are getting much more than 8xx PPFD.

Here's the light data from today:
Legend
271 - the X3 is at 271 watts
11/12 - hang heights
20 - the photoperiod

The readings represent the location of where the reading was taken.
The numbers at the edge of the grid are averages.
Per above, two locations in the canopy have a DLI > 70 moles.

Previous grow, day 44.

Current grow, day 44.

 

[Delps8]

This grow is different from previous grows because I'm seeing EC dropping. In previous grows, EC hasn't dropped, generally speaking, and I've attributed that to the fact that I've got just 2 plants feeding in 28 gallons of nutes. The previous grows were Gorilla Glue autos vs Strawberry Pie autos for this run. Also, my light levels are markedly higher and I used a veg light which resulted in noticeably more vegetation.

In addition to EC dropping, I've seen significant water uptake with > a gallon a day being consumed on many days. Over the course of week, the res may be > 5 gallons down so I've been dealing with the replenishment issue. In past grows, I've added just RO, just nutes, and, most recently, diluted nutrient solution.

The driver for the latter was a Bugbee paper which discusses the issue and he recommends a 33% Hoagland solution. That's all well and good for a large scale grow but I'm not "sufficiently motivated" to take on another set of chemistry lessons.

Over the past few weeks, I've allowed the nute level to drop and then have done a fresh res with a higher EC. How well has that worked - EC is dropping very quickly. Good example - I did a new res on Saturday at EC 1.58. Here are my notes in my grow journal:

"New res at 790. I spent some time thinking about the new EC level and, now that I've finished swapping
the res, I just know that these plants are going to chew through these nutes in a couple of days. "

And, sure enough, PPM started dropping within a few hours. This tell me that I've got very hungry plants and that I should have gone with a higher EC when I did the new res.

As of this AM, just under 72 hours later, that 28 gallon res has dropped from EC 1.48 to EC 1.42. Water level was down 6 gallons as of yesterday AM and I expect that it's down at least another gallon.

Combine those two and, with the weekend being three days away, there's no way I can wait until Saturday to do a new res.

What's the right answer?

The key point that Bugbee made was the N, P, and K are taken up within a few hours whereas the other elements are taken up on a scale of days. The Excel document below shows a hypothetical uptake scenario where PPM was 790 and current PPM is 700± with simulated depletions. N, P, and K are taken up quickly and Mg and Ca being depleted almost as quickly. Is this accurate? Dunno but it does provide some insight.

One of the points that Bugbee drives home is that growers shouldn't react to the depleting of chemicals from the reservoir for the simple reason that that's why we have a reservoir - the fact that a nutrients have been taken up is exactly the desired outcome. With N, P, and K being taken up very quickly, PPM will drop but that's only because those chemicals are now in the plant which is where we want them. As he points out, if the well intentioned grower replenishes the reservoir with nutrient solution, that will result in N, P, K being replenished (as well as other chemicals) even though they're not needed. If the grower continues to add fresh nutes each time there's a drop, that will lead to plants having too much N, P, and K. Oops.

That explanation takes the "top up with full strength nutes" off the table, leaving me with the RO-only and diluted strength nutes options.

This table represents my guess at the current content of the res (PPM is 700). I don't think that it's all that inaccurate because if I drop the percentage for "Fast", the chemicals that are taken up very quickly, the resultant PPM drops very, very quickly.

If I add 6 gallons of RO, the ratios between the chemicals does not change, which is a good thing, but the amount of salts available to the plant will drop. That means that the plants will still have a balanced nutrient solution and will still able to take up nutrients, albeit a a slower rate than if the nutrient concentrations were higher. The fact that uptake is slowed is not all that detrimental - that's what fan leaves are for, right?

Perhaps that's the rationale behind the practice of topping up with RO-only — it keeps the nutrient mix in balance but it doesn't cause plant stress because plants can still take in nutrients and, if there's a shortfall, they can draw nutrients from on board stores.

OK, enough argle bargle. Time to get in the tent and add some RO.

 

[Delps8]

Day 56 above ground.

Looks like my winning streak has come to an end — over the past two days, Alice (and Annie to a much lesser extent) has shown symptoms of a nute issue. I've posted a distress call here.

On a much happier note, the plants have been doing very well though they're nowhere near as tall as the Gorilla Glues. I got spoiled with two runs of GG's, I guess.

I've continued to get my moneys' worth out of the X3. The plants are at the point where measuring PPFD/DLI is really taking representative readings but DLI's have been in the low 60's and high 50's. I've had a few instances of light avoidance but those were spots that were > 1k µmols, so not unexpected. Ironically, I've had to resort to putting a "shade" around the center of the center light bar to block some of the light from the X3.

This canopy is nowhere nearly as even as the GG's and I've had to resort to doing some LST. My technique has been to "massage" the stem, a la super cropping, but I've only needed to bend the stem, rather than "break" it. After that, I hang a 2 oz weight on the stem. It's worked out quite well.

The trellis is buried in the foliage but I'll move it up over the weekend and I'll add some of the support elastics, too.

After discussions on another forum, I've settled on a good approach to topping up. Site rules don't allow me to link to is so I've attached a screenshot.

This works out pretty well since my res is 3.5 gallons per square foot, it takes into account that plants are tiny when they're young but also acknowledges that swapping the res every two weeks or so is a good metric, and then throws in the guard rail of replacing the res when TDS is down by 25%.

As it turns out, topping off with RO is a very good approach but the site provides justification for that approach. Without data, it's just someone with an opinion, right?

If you want the URL for the page, send a private message and I'll be happy to provide it.

I didn't provide the title to the Bugbee paper that I discussed previously. Fire up your favorite search engine and look for "Nutrient Management in Recirculating Hydroponic Culture". It's a very good read.

Last item - in case you have noticed I'm a strong advocate for providing cannabis with a lot of light. Over the past few weeks, I've had to leave the flats of my tent open which means that the DLI at the front of the tent is anemic. I've figured out something that I think will turn into a workable remedy.

I found data about reflectivity of material that's commonly used for grow tents and it turns out that a "space blanket" does a fine job. I ordered a wheeled clothing rack and a six pack of emergency blankets and presto! I've got "Shields up!". Yeh, it's funky but…it works. No doubt, it's not in its final form but total cost was $50, since it's on wheels I can move it around//get it out of the way very easily, and, though I've only done one, quick measurement, it looks like it's reflecting about 120µmols back on to the front row of my plants.

If the space blanket doesn't work out for me, I can hang a light from the cart and add as much PAR as I want.

Setting aside the sudden appearance of whatever deficiency I've run into, one of the reasons I haven't posted much is that there's just not a lot going on. It's been a very hassle-free grow so I've really just gotten into the routine of check/add water, add pH Up or Down, take light measurements, raise the light, and try to keep RH in range so that VPD is 1.something. All in all, just cruising along.

 

[Delps8]

Day 66 above ground.

Plants are doing well. They're in "mid flower", I'd guess, with buds starting to form on Annie while the buds on Alice are a few days further along.

Alice had/has what appears to be a Ca deficiency. When I did the new res eight days ago, I increased the amount of Jack's Part A by 20%. I'm seeing a few more spots on Alice and even some on Annie, unfortunately. I'm doing a new res tomorrow and will do a +20% Part A res again. Strange having a Ca deficiency at this point because Ca uptake drops in flower.

Yes, this is another "twins" grow. Alice had some problems as a seedling and wasn't able to tolerate higher DLI the way Annie did. Whatever caused those symptoms is playing out in other ways. Alice, like the previous grow with Wilma and Chris, is about 1/5 the size of Annie. Alice has buds at 40" and 44" while Annie's canopy is at 50" with a couple of colas at 54".

This was my first grow with the veg light and I switched out the veg light early in flower. Given that I might be running out of tent, I'll make sure to switch to the flower light later in the cycle for future grows. A couple of Annie's colas stand above the canopy and, per the pix, they are no longer visible from the front of the tent. The only way I can see Annie's canopy is to stand on a step stool and look in through the left exhaust port or I can unzip the top zipper of the 1' extension panel. Taking light readings is more difficult, even though my Apogee has a wand. A light meter is "good enough" in terms of determining light levels but it would be a total PITA to try to use a light meter with this grow.

Over the past few weeks, I have LST'd some of Annie's stems and supercropped two of them (one by mistake!) so the canopy is quite even at this point. My concern now is how high will the canopy be when the plants stop stretching. The tent is a standard Gorilla Grow 2' x 4' tent with a 1' extension and, I just measured Annie, there's about 24" between Annie's tallest cola and the top of the tent.

A couple of grows ago, I had three compact plants and one plant, Jeff, that was well over 4'. Jeff got so big that I had to cull two of the three smaller plants. The remaining small plant, Mary, was maybe 18" wide and about 24" or 30" tall. She was very easy to work with and yielded 273 gm. I would much prefer to have four small plants instead of a Twins grow where one plant yields 139 gm and the other yields 590 gm. Four foot tall plants like Jeff and Chris were is a lot of work at harvest.

Both plants continue to drop leaves and I've taken up the practice of removing any stem that has a bud that could turn out to be lard. I realize that will impact yield but these plant generate so much flower that I'm not concerned about the miscellany below the canopy.

That's the big (plant) news.

My previous post showed "shields up" where I was using a clothing rack and a space blanket to reflect light back into the tent. The reason I have to leave the tent flaps open is because there's so much foliage that I can't get RH anywhere near where it should be. I've got the large Waykar dehu running on high and it's set to 30% but the plants are taking up an average of 2 gallons a day and most of that water comes back out. Also, thanks to the "perpetual drought" here in Southern California, we're getting cool temps (lows in the 40's next week) and damp and rainy weather. All in all, it's a struggle to keep RH (and, therefore, VPD) in range even with the flaps open.

Seeing that I had a Mars SP 3000 that I was no longer using, I decided to use the Mars instead of the space blanket. The blanket was able to reflect about 100µmols back into the tent but it was only the very front few inches of the plants that benefited. The Mars is now hanging from the clothing rack and hitting the front row with <=750µmols. The three lights are drawing 400 watts in total - lotsa light <==> lotsa plant.

I've been remiss in upping the DLI on Annie. It's been a bit of a pain to have to repeatedly raise the light but it's not like I'm keeping her in the dark. I'll look into that tomorrow and stay on top of it.

Light data is here:

Yeh, looking at DLI's for Alice, I should have been giving her more light. The height difference between the two plants was a pisser but I've got things squared away so I can can ramp DLI back up on her now.

Weather has been strange. For the next week or so, temps will top out in the 60's with lows in the 40's and low 50's. That's about 4° below average for this time of year but, with the exception of a 4 day "heat wave", temps this year have been on the cool size. Thank you, La Niña. Between the lights, the dehu, and the water chiller, there's a fair amount of heat being generated plus the car comes home at about 6 PM so that helps boost temps for the night hours. Overnight temps drop into the mid-70's so VPD but I can't get the RH down so VPD is 0.8 or lower for much of the time.

One step I can take is to use the driver that's in the tent. Both of my main lights are Growcraft and they use the same model driver (320 watts). One is located in the tent, the other outside. Thanks to pushlock connectors it takes all of 30 seconds to disconnect the feed wire from one driver and connect the feed wire from the other. I was running the internal driver for a few days but adding the Mars pushes temps a couple of degrees too high so I switched back yesterday. Looking at the "impending glaciation", though, I expect that I'll have to switch back.

Nutes - no news is good news. I'm using the "add back RO and swap the res when TDS is down by 25%" and, surprise, surprise, these plants are taking up so much water that I need to swap the res each week. The last res was 840, 25% down is 630, and the res is at 550 today so it's time to change it out.



Tent cam

Looking down, onto the canopy

Mars SP 3000 at 111 watts. Really easy to work with - I just roll it out of the way to work in the tent and then roll it back.

I cut a couple of lengths of 1" PVC pipe to increase the height of the cross bar.

There's a second scrog net that's just below the fan. That net is 45" above the top of the res.

Alice

Annie

Annie

 

[Trala]

Hi

I love your grow style. Neatest and order make my heart sing.

I’m gonna stalk follow along.

 

[Delps8]

Day 70 above ground.

Had to do a new res because PPM was down to 440. Water is > 2 gallons a day so no surprise that TDS fell so quickly and so far.

I think Annie has stopped growing because height is the same as yesterday. I don't note which cola I measure from but I'm now at 8" in one location and 9" in another. The tallest cola I can easily reach is 53" and there's one in the back right corner that's 55". I'm glad I'm growing autos and spent $$ on a grow light - that's why the plants are so short…

Switch to taking light readings for the colas instead of in a grid pattern. It looks like the LST effort has paid off. A couple of the colas are off in the corners but, of the ones that are in the main body of the plant, things are looking really good. The standard deviation for PPFD is only 43µmols and for DLI is 3moles. Can't ask for much better than that.

As usual, Jack's nutes are performing really well. I used the "Wonder Chart" for my first few grows but, after switching to Jack's, WEP is pretty much a foregone conclusion (WEP = "Water, EC, pH"). There were so many "FFS" or "FFR" (Falling, Falling, Static/Rising) that I don't bother to note it any longer.

EC of the new res? According to what sensor? The Bluelab EC pen can be calibrated and it was +5 PPM today, well within the ±50 PPM stated accuracy. The super dooped Bluelab monitor cannot be calibrated and it is reading +85 when tested it today. I calculate everything back to the Bluelab so the new res is 820/500 vs the previous res that was 840/500. If these plants keep drinking 2+ gallons a day, I'll be doing another mid-week res change next week.

Weather outside is cool (64°) so I'm going to have to turn the heat on in the house if I want to continue to wear my work uniform (T shirt and gym shorts) and it rained the other day! Tent weather is good. I'm running the X3 on the driver in the tent so that's generating some warmth. Wattages - X3-205, Vipar Spectra-75, Mars 110. RH still an issue so VPD is <1.0 until noon or so.

Family portrait. I really need to just go with one plant. This is my fourth grow and, in each grow, one plant has dominated the other(s). Maybe need to mainline a photo?

 

[Delps8]

Day 74 above ground.

Annie has stopped growing (vertically), fortunately, and the big changes are in the flowers. A few of the stems were sticking up over the rest of the canopy and I was able to LST them though they ended up needing three 2 oz weights. They look strange, with two right angle bends, and I'm looking forward to all of the flowers growing togther to form one large, but bent, cola.

Annie stopped growing as of two days ago, fortunately, and, with the canopy being pretty flat, I don't have to go through the process of having to raise the light.

 

[Delps8]

Day 87 above ground.

Not good news — yet again, a thrip infestation. My thinking was that thrips were seasonal so I wouldn't get hit with a grow at this time of the year. That turned out to not be the case. I've had the back door (to the garage) open only when I swap the res but I did find some little beasties in my RO so perhaps that the source?

It's Spinosad time and I'll be using that as part of my grow process from now on.

 

[Trala]

Choot em!

 

[Delps8]

Day 93 above ground.

And all is not well but it could be worse. Before that, a "joke".

Two old friends run into each other while shopping downtown.

"It's been a while. How are things going?"
"Oh, you know how it is, about average."
"Really? How's that?"
"You know - not as good as yesterday but better than tomorrow."

With that out of the way…I spent some time checking over the plants and ended up removing a fair amount of leaves and, unfortunately, one entire stem with buds that were covered in very sticky clear trichs and was the best looking cola (that I could see) on the plant. All in all, I removed enough to fill about half of an office wastebasket. As much as I hate the fact that I got hit by thrips yet again, I realize that it's completely my fault. I got thrips in my previous grow and, while reading up on how to deal with them, I interpreted a comment that "thrips are most active in the summer" to mean that they weren't active at other times and, based on that, did not spray Spinosad prophylactically. Failing to spray to prevent infestation will end up costing me a lot of my crop. Fortunately, I have a lot of weed from previous grows but it's still painful to see the plants in the condition they are in and knowing that I can't do anything about it.

Enough of that.

After cutting out that stem, I will post a photo of part of it, I was able to look into the plant and there's a huge amount of foliage in there. The breeder indicates that this strain is "compact" and grows up to 39". Bullshit. This plant is almost 18" taller than that and that is not good. I can't see the top of the plants and, as a result, I stopped checking things out on a daily basis. I will admit that I got complacent - the grow was going really well, with all of the grow environment parameters being "optimal". Good water, air movement, pH predictable, EC predictable, etc., etc. Once the plants stop stretching, I didn't have to futz with the light so I spent very little time tending to the plants. I'm fine with that - as much as it might be heretical to say it, I grow cannabis plants so that I can harvest cannabis, not so that I can spend resources (time, manpower, materiel, and money) to grow cannabis. With that mindset, I didn't spend as much time "in the tent" once they stopped stretching because I was in the home stretch.

And then Murphy (thrips) kicked my ass.

The good news is that the Spinosad did the job. I cut some petioles and there were thrips on some of the leaves but they were dead. That's the same result from a check a few days ago. ATM, I'm assuming that all thrips are dead but I'm going to do another drenching as a precaution.

I used about a pint of what was left of a quart bottle of "Natural Guard Spinosad Soap" and then bought a bottle of "Bonide Captain Jacks Deadbug Brew Organic Insect Killer Liquid Concentrate 16 oz" and used another couple of pints. That's < a quart, all told, and that was extremely effect in killing the thrips in a large plant with a lot of foliage.

The concentrate is the way to go. It's mixed using ½ oz of concentrate per quart of water so a quart of concentrate will give me 64 quarts//heavy applications of Thrip-killer.

The plants smell great and, when I touch the plant, the scent is very strong. Strawberry Pie is a great name for this strain.

One last item. Annie dominates the tent, with Alice being < 20% of the space. This is the third grow in a row (out of five) where I've had that happen. It's not good. I don't like having two size of plants and I damned sure do not want plants that grow so tall that I can't see the tops. The irony, of course, is that these plants were vegged using a veg light and were beautiful compact plants when they started to flower. Though I don't have the data, it would not surprise me if Annie grew 30" once she hit flower and Alice probably doubled in height. I guess I can "blame" that on the grow light.

While it's nice to have a big crop, I need to do "something" about the plants growing too tall. The only thing about my grow that varies significantly from most other cannabis grows is the size of the res. Yes, I'm careful to keep VPD close to optimal and I do give my plants lots of light but I suspect that having two plants in 25 gallons of nutes allows them to grow much larger than if they were in, say, in a 3 gallon bucket of soil.

There's a happy medium and I need to find it. In this environment, whatever I'm doing is causing plants to, frankly, grow out of the tent.

I'd love to grow in a 4' x 4' but I don't have room in my garage. I live in a typical SoCal gated community, "garage with a house attached" home that has a small footprint (real estate costs here are horrid - the hose next door, which is slightly smaller and needed some repair, just sold for $920k), and between a car and my Honda GoldWing and shelves and an elliptical and an extra 'fridge and…, there's just no room for a 4' x 4'. A 3' x 3' would be a great shape for one plant but my res and I have three lights are 39/40". No way I'm going to change all of that equipment for kit that will fit a 3' space.

Some steps to take that will help reduce plant height are to grow autos that are shorter, grow photos and veg them appropriately, use the veg light for longer and the flower light for a shorter time, and increase the temperature difference between lights on and lights off (not going to happen). That's all that's come to mind so far — I'm more than open to ideas.

Seeing that I can veg a photoperiod to the height that I want, perhaps I should give that a try.

Enough for now, gotta get back to work. Unfortunately, I've been working on a feature for a client that's a computing problem that I've never tackled (I've been writing software professionally for 30 years). I delivered a version last week and their QA people discovered a condition where the code I wrote does not generate all of the data that's needed.

The requirement is to generate part numbers that consist of all possible combinations of a varying number of component descriptors in a variable number of list boxes. The approach I took appeared to give the correct output but, under one very specific circumstance, it does not do so. That means that the approach that I've taken is, to put it simply, wrong. I got the results back on Friday AM and have had to come up with a completely different approach. Fortunately, now that I've been immersed in this problem for over a week, I'm familiar enough with the concepts that I can create alternative strategies but that level of mental gymnastics does get frustrating from time to time.

Happy Saturday everyone. Kill a thrip for me, will ya?

 

[Trala]

Good morning

Omg the Battle of the Insect!



Could have been worse, could have been mites lol.

So I think I might have an answer to your low grow needs. Feast your eyes on Carcass. He is the low grow king!

Search @Carcass there you will find your answers grasshopper.

 

[Delps8]

Good morning

Omg the Battle of the Insect!



Could have been worse, could have been mites lol.

So I think I might have an answer to your low grow needs. Feast your eyes on Carcass. He is the low grow king!

Search @Carcass there you will find your answers grasshopper.

Thank you for that info. I will check it out.

 

[Delps8]

After 111 days above ground, I chopped the plants on 12/21/22. I could have done a sequential harvest but I decided to chop everything that I could at once. I could have increased the yield by an ounce or two, perhaps, but some of the buds were very immature and I was at the point of "let's get this over with" rather than "Heh, more weed if I wait a week!". I've got a good inventory of weed and the plants were in such bad shape from the thrips that I decided to chop everything and just toss out what wasn't up to par. And there was quite a bit that smokeable, unfortunately.

Annie's canopy was 50+" with one stem at 55" but Alice was closer to the 39" height where the breeder said this strain would top out. The 55" height caused some problems and has weighed heavily on my decision to run a photoperiod plant for my next grow. More on that in a minute.

Harvesting, bucking, and trimming did not take long; perhaps a total of eight hours. I didn't bother to harvest about 1/2 of Alice and my "GAS gauge" ("GAS" = give a shit) has been near the empty mark for a while now. A much higher percentage of Annie was usable thanks, in part, to having the Mars SP 3000 lighting the "front row". I did chop the buds in the interior but that didn't contribute much.

After bud washing, the stems hung in the garage overnight and I started trimming the next AM. Even though I grow in a small tent, the bowl trimmer is a "hand-saver" to me. I write software for a living and, have been working on a computer almost daily since 1987, I am careful to reduce the wear and tear on my hands. The bowl trimmer is well worth the C note just from that perspective. Add in the fact that it saves hours of labor and it's a double win. Once trimmed, the buds went into paper sacks, and were set out to dry in the tent.

The yield and quality of this crop nowhere near my previous crop. The previous grow had 20± large, stacked colas. IIRC, I ended up with 1/4 pound of buds in the 3"+ range. All in all, my Gorilla Glue autos yielded 590 gm/21 oz from Chris and 139/4 from Wilma.

This crop was a different story. The yield isn't as bad as I'd first guessed and that was based on how quickly I was able to chop and process - it just didn't take very long to get the job done. I was able to get moisture into the 60's but, once I got the bud into four quarter pound Grove bags, RH popped up to 70 or so. We're getting rain here in SoCal but the RH in the house is in the low 50's, so I'm leaving the bags open to the air to finish off the drying process.

The quality was not what I was expecting and the yield took a hit, too. That's the result of a couple of things going sideways. When the canopy grew into the top of the tent, I got lazy. The grow was on autopilot, so no need to check it so much, right? When the canopy got so tall, it was no longer easy to get light readings, even with the Apogee wand. Plus, I had to stand on a step stool and look in through one of the vents so I could see the plants. When they stopped growing, I stopped taking light readings. When I stopped checking the plants every day, I didn't realize that I had thrips until the infestation was well under way. It looked like Spinosad had done a great job but as soon as I started to chop, I realized that things were looking pretty grim. Instead of large, stacked colas most of the harvest was small buds with only a handful of stacked colas.

Everything is bagged up though and yield is OK. One of the bags is at 62%, the others are still in the high 60's and will take a few more days to dry out. ATM, the net weight is 513 gm so, even with weight loss due to drying, I'll end up > 1 pound. All in all, an acceptable harvest in terms of weight but a step down in terms of quality.

Per above, I've decided to do a photo grow. The grows that I've done with autos have turned out well but I'n looking forward to being able to decide when to flip to flower and, second, I'm looking forward to not having to babysit VPD as much. The 20 hour photoperiod I was using meant that, one, I was running a lot of light for almost 80% of the day and, second, I was spending a lot of time and energy to keep VPD right on target. That all changes with photos. Photos offer a better yield, increased potency, some control over plant height, and, since it's 12/12 in flower, and a lot less time dealing with VPD.

The next grow is started, with two Chemdog and two Original Glue seeds that have germinated and are in RapidRooters in the grow dome. The heat mat is at 80°; Tlaloc, named after the Aztec rain god, has been called in as a replacement for Wetbird and is keeping RH at 80%; while the XS-1500 is raining 150µmols of photons. Another grow, another journal.

 

[Mike Wright]

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