Re: New City Grower
Hey guys
just read through last nights show and i just want to pick up on a few things. I'll prob forget some stuff but here goes:
theirs a good grow method ive watched that involves flushing 2 or 3 times during flower, i sent some members links to the strain hunters grow vids where they flush their plants 2 or 3 times during flower as this promotes bigger buds or at least thats what they suggest, they flush then totally let the grow medium dry before starting to feed again, its all about getting the most oxygen to the roots so flushing the nutes and letting the medium go bone dry helps the roots just take in nutes which in turn helps increase bud size,
This is true but it doesnt work for every medium and its not a true flush. The strain hunters use rockwool as their medium and they flush at around 0.6-0.8ec. this removes excess salt from the media but doesnt starve the plant completely. Doing this boosts the plants metabolism and therefore u will get an explosion of growth after the next full strength feed. Be warned, this is an advanced technique and its all in the timing, u can do more harm than good if timed wrong. when growing in hydro, u want nutrients available all the time until the very end when u flush.
So to clarify what 'flushing' a plant is. it seems there are misconceptions of what the definition of a flush is, from what i am reading it seems most think its a case of drowning the plant with water to wash out the medium. A true flush means to clean out the medium with water and allow the plant to use up any nutes it has stored up. I would put water through till there was about 20% run off at first, then over a 2 week period only add water. U could add a product like drip clean or canna flush to help dissolve the salts and u could also continue to use cannazym or similar during the flush as it will further help the plant use up the last of the nutes.
Light addict mentions using shooting powder during the flush period. Shooting powder is a powerful bloom booster and can do wonders to ur yield. However its very powerful and it must be used with caution, a base nute of 1.2ec or less is esential if u dont want to bake ur plants to death, also u must flush after using this product. shooting pwder is used last 3 weeks of flower, ur flush time is after that.
Pruning buds is pretty simple. Being a commercial grower i dont have the time to cut out every single little bit of leaf and to fair i dont think thats necessary. Try trimming 100-200oz every week or 2 and u'll understand my meaning. As long as the fan leaves are removed and larger sugar leaves its fine. I trim around the bud with my snips, i then cut of the stem and chop in to smaller nugs then place on a drying rack for up to 2 weeks in humidity of 35-40rh with a gentle fan blowing, after that they go in paper bags and are left a few weeks and when they come out they are compact and hard, i then vacuum pack to preserve and distribute. Vacuum pack will preserve the bud as long as its not sitting in light and it will control any odours while transporting bud to final location. The main thing with getting compact bud is making sure ur bud is dense as poss when harvesting, whispy bud never drys compact like that.
As for EC in hydro there is no set rule really. it depends on the type of hydro set up, for example rockwool will have completely different needs to recirculating DWC and regular DWC diff needs to recirculating. Then u have to figure out what the strain likes. Many people grow a new strain and dismiss it first time around, thats not a good idea. It is usually grower error that makes the strain not work, of course everone has preference on what they like but i would normally give a strain at least 2 attempts before dismissing it. As a basic rule u could follow this and u shouldnt go wrong, seedlings 0.4 e.c, young cuttings 0.6/0.8 ec, vegging plants upto 1.6ec, flowering plants upto 3.0 ec. Its more important that u dont over or under feed very young plants, large plants will handle just about anything. The nutes u use will also have an effect and u will have more control and better results with 3 part nutes as opposed to 1 part base nutes, that is when u figure out how the plant responds to feeds and understanding how to use a 3 part correctly. Remember the instructions on the bottle are just a basic guide, its up to u to figure out what works best for ur plants.
Great show, im sure ive missed out loads. The best thing for any grower to do is read the advise, check what the grower is growing to see if they are backing it up with results then maybe try some of the stuff they talk about. Changing too much at once can mess things up, and everyones advice is open to challenge, there is no steadfast way. Ive been told many things are wrong and dont work, usually by people who copy and paste and havent even tried the techniques, and ive proved otherwise but again its down to many things. In growing the most important thing is 1 get good lighting 2. set ur environment correctly. Do those 2 things and u will have success.
it's capable of reading either but I've chosen ec
Skybound, I'm using a Fieldscout EC meter by Spectrum. I have it set to read from 0 to 2000 μS/cm. There are 4 available settings: PU, LO, HI, and Auto. the first 2 read μS/cm, the 3rd reads mS/cm. Should I change the setting to 'Auto'?
