Round 2: Northern Lights x2, 1200x1200 Tent, 315W CMH

[d42zero]

14/2
My babies have had a bit of a growth spurt overnight!

They're getting thirsty... it's now taking 800ml 1x daily to achieve ~30% runoff, only a few days ago it was only taking ~250ml. They got a scoop of Great White myco in their feed this week, so that may have helped their roots get going

Will set up the auto watering system tonight or tomorrow, then I think next weekend I'll do the transplant to the bigger pots. I'd like to see their roots get all the way to the bottom of these pots before I move them over, but at the rate they're growing I don't think that's going to take much longer!

Min-max 23.3-29.0C, 51-81% RH.

 

[d42zero]

16/2

Girls have grown loads again since the other day The articles I've been reading about doing two transplants suggest that the second transplant should happen once the plants are twice the size they were at the first transplant... They're at that point now, but I'm going to manifold them so I think I'm going to do the next transplant after they've had their second round of topping. The transplant is supposed to give them a little growth spurt, if that's the case I think I want that to happen once the manifolding is done.

They're definitely at a size they can be topped and training can begin, so that'll likely happen tonight.

Min-max 23.3-29.0C, 50-81% RH.

 

[Havocsm1]

16/2

Girls have grown loads again since the other day The articles I've been reading about doing two transplants suggest that the second transplant should happen once the plants are twice the size they were at the first transplant... They're at that point now, but I'm going to manifold them so I think I'm going to do the next transplant after they've had their second round of topping. The transplant is supposed to give them a little growth spurt, if that's the case I think I want that to happen once the manifolding is done.

They're definitely at a size they can be topped and training can begin, so that'll likely happen tonight.

Min-max 23.3-29.0C, 50-81% RH.

They look good. Definitely getting pretty big.

 

[d42zero]

17/2
Not big any more @Havocsm1 !

Topped above the 2nd proper node, 1st node and baby leaves below that removed. Dunked the cuttings in some rooting gel and popped them in coco, if they take off I want to give them to a friend for him to grow. I like to experiment so it'll be interesting to see what kind of difference our grow setups make.

I also finally got auto-watering set up....

Res holds about 25L, I did the sums and I think I'll use about 20-30L per week in flower so that should be ok. I can swap the pumps out into a different container pretty easily so I can go bigger if I need to but I think I'm good.

Inside:

Both heads are delivering almost exactly 500ml per minute each (1L per min total), currently set to 30sec 2x daily however the pump takes 5sec to prime the lines so the girls are getting just over 200ml per watering.

I think I'll look for better drip heads.. those are just 4mm plastic line with holes drilled in it and it's a bit awkward to install/remove. Works for now though!

Min-max 25.1-30.4C, 54-60% RH.

 

[Havocsm1]

17/2
Not big any more @Havocsm1 !

Topped above the 2nd proper node, 1st node and baby leaves below that removed. Dunked the cuttings in some rooting gel and popped them in coco, if they take off I want to give them to a friend for him to grow. I like to experiment so it'll be interesting to see what kind of difference our grow setups make.

I also finally got auto-watering set up....

Res holds about 25L, I did the sums and I think I'll use about 20-30L per week in flower so that should be ok. I can swap the pumps out into a different container pretty easily so I can go bigger if I need to but I think I'm good.

Inside:

Both heads are delivering almost exactly 500ml per minute each (1L per min total), currently set to 30sec 2x daily however there's an almost exactly 5sec delay while the pump primes the lines so the girls are getting just over 200ml per watering.

I think I'll look for better drip heads.. those are just 4mm plastic line with holes drilled in it and it's a bit awkward to install/remove. Works for now though!

Min-max 25.1-30.4C, 54-60% RH.

The plants don't know it yet but we cut them in half as babies for their own good. Nice job

 

[d42zero]

18/2
All looking good

Both plants have sprouted their third branch nodes.. still a while away from their next round of topping, but not too far away... probably this weekend.

Have run into one small issue, the branches will soon sit over the sides of the pots and make it a little hard to train them... that may be an argument to skip the 1gal pot, however they seem to have grown super fast so the transplant might have been good for them... I didn't top my last girls until about day 30, these ones got topped on day 21.

Watering system working as planned.. will measure the runoff in the tanks tomorrow evening for a rough idea on how much I'm getting and adjust watering time if needed. Should be able to keep an eye on it that way since there's little to no evaporation thanks to the closed containers, that should also make measuring runoff pH and EC easy. I don't do that regularly but maybe just once a week, I think it can give me a little warning about possible issues coming up.

The coco will get a flush next weekend, which will be super easy now thanks to the watering system... will just run a full res through them every two or three weeks.

Min-max 22.6-28.8C, 53-74% RH.

 

[d42zero]

19/2
Apart from poking my finger in the coco to make sure it's wet, not really much to do today.. All looking good

Clones seem to be picking up a bit, from memory it took about a week last time before they looked decent so I'm not too worried about them.

Min-max 25.6-29.1C, 39-69% RH.

@The Dirty forgot to tag you in a few there fella

 

[d42zero]

20/2
So I got my calculations wrong on the watering.. the heads are delivering 1L per minute each, not 500ml per minute.. they're running for 30secs each watering but with the delay to prime the line they're delivering about 400ml per event. I measured runoff from one plant this morning and it was 800ml after five waterings... 800ml / 5 = 160ml runoff per watering... 160/400 = 0.4 or 40% runoff which is at the high end of what I'm aiming for but not enough to warrant mucking around with watering times, better to overwater than underwater I think. pH was 6.3 and EC was 1650ppm, solution is going in at pH6.0 and 1250ppm so that's acceptable I think.

1250ppm sounds hot but I've been adding a lot of calmag to reeeeally prime that coco. I've been running 2ml per litre as per the bottle directions (40ml per 20L) so far... I had some calmag issues early in my last grow but in the latter half of the grow I was running 4ml calmag per 20 litres and that was fine, so over the next week or two I'll scale that back lots, final solution ppm will drop a fair bit as I do that as the calmag probably accounts for a few hundred ppm. Next time I mix a res I'll actually measure the ppm as I add each additive.

Min-max 24.9-29.5C, 40-55% RH.

 

[d42zero]

23/2
The girls went into their 3gal pots today and the second and final round of manifolding happened, they look a little different!

Tomato rings will go in soon then we'll just play the waiting game for a couple of weeks. I'm going away for a couple of days.. this auto-watering thing is the bommmmmmb

I was writing each week's nute mix on masking tape and sticking that to the res, but I think I'll start posting it here so I've got a better record... this week's mix:

20L water
10ml calmag
26.5ml floraMicro
26.5ml floraGro
13ml floraBloom
2.1ml DripClean
0.95ml pH down
1 scoop Great White

Min-max C, 24.3-29.4, 41-62% RH.

 

[d42zero]

24/2
I've always had issues getting pH right (last grow I handwatered and mixed nutes in small drums), but with the Bubblegen running in the res 24/7 the nutes are getting REALLY well mixed. I came back a few hours later and measured pH again, it was 3.8!! I put about 0.5ml pH up and it came back to 6.3.

Will try 0.5ml pH down next time and see if that gets closer. pH has been 6.0-6.3 since the start so I might swing it down to 5.8 over the next two res fills. I don't really know what I'm doing there but I've read pH should swing rather than stay constant, so might as well give it a go..

 

[d42zero]

25/2

I don't think these little guys know it yet, but they'll grow up to be main colas

So far I think everything looks good, still not really sure what I'm doing but at this stage they seem pretty healthy

Min-max 24.4-29.5C, 43-68% RH.

 

[d42zero]

27/2
Just on cruise control at the moment, nothing really happening. I keep trying to find something to do but, apart from moving the plants and fan around a little for no real reason at all, they haven't really needed attention for the past three days.

I'm going away tomorrow for four days though, so this'll be a real test of things. The res is a bit over half full after three days so, to make sure I don't run dry, I'll top it up tonight... I'll probably end up having half or so left when I get back but it's better than running dry, and when I get back I'll top the res up with plain pH'd water then run all of it through the coco to give it a flush.

On the topic of flush I tested runoff today; pH6.3 and 1354ppm. Nutes are going in at pH6.4 and 1045ppm so that looks good to me. Going by that they don't really need a flush but I'll do it anyway before mixing a fresh batch.

I'm in "week 3" on the GH feed chart I'm working from which is the last week of veg (on the chart)... at the moment I'll just stay with that mix for another week or two then once they're ready to flip I'll move forward to "week 4" which they call "transition."

Min-max 25.1-29.9C, 46-70% RH.

 

[Mars Hydro]

Love the healthy green

 

[d42zero]

1/3 - 35 days from seed
Sooo went away for four days and came back to this....

Everything seems to have run smoothly while I was away.... plants are lovely and healthy, res is about half empty as I expected, coco is nice and moist on top... all good

Today is day 35 from seed, or five weeks.. but only nine days since the manifolding was finished which is when I really consider 'veg' to start. I think they'll probably only go another week before flip, they might even get flipped this coming weekend

Min-max 23.5-29.4C, 47-84% RH.

 

[Havocsm1]

They look great for day 35 keep it up!!

 

[d42zero]

They look great for day 35 keep it up!!

Thanks! They've really grown fast.. I checked my last journal and they're about one to two weeks ahead of my last grow, I did have some issues last grow with underwatering and the pots being too big so that may have slowed it down. These girls are just powering through everything I've thrown at them, which is awesome

I flipped my first grow at day 65... these are on track for the flip around day 45! I think that 20 days is 50% due to the watering/pot size issue and 50% due to me flipping the last grow a bit late. Either way, when you think about nute and electricity use, a 20 day saving is huuuuge!

 

[Havocsm1]

Nice man I'm trying to fix an underwatering issue too right now. Gotta get it just right.

 

[d42zero]

Nice man I'm trying to fix an underwatering issue too right now. Gotta get it just right.

This time around I'm erring on the side of too much water rather than not enough... I found a watering guide at cocoforcannabis.com that I used to plan this grow, the main gist of it is water 5% of your pot size regularly enough to get the runoff you're looking for (or to get the EC figures in your runoff that you're looking for).

So for me in 11litre pots I'm watering about 550ml per event, I was watering twice daily but the coco was a little dry when I got back from my trip so I've increased that to 3x daily now.

Might not work for you but that's what's working for me at the moment

 

[d42zero]

4/3
They're getting so big that I'm having trouble photographing them without fully opening the tent!

#1 is quite a bit bigger than #2... hopefully she catches up before the flip. Speaking of the flip, once they're almost to the top tomato ring that'll be time... #1 will get there by the end of the week, #2 maybe a week behind.. might have to split the difference and let #1 go a wee bit over.

Min-max 24.1-27.4C, 65-85% RH.

@The Dirty

 

[Havocsm1]

This time around I'm erring on the side of too much water rather than not enough... I found a watering guide at cocoforcannabis.com that I used to plan this grow, the main gist of it is water 5% of your pot size regularly enough to get the runoff you're looking for (or to get the EC figures in your runoff that you're looking for).

So for me in 11litre pots I'm watering about 550ml per event, I was watering twice daily but the coco was a little dry when I got back from my trip so I've increased that to 3x daily now.

Might not work for you but that's what's working for me at the moment

Mine was definitely an underwatering issue they're doing better now. Yes I was told to get runoff Everytime which I wasn't. Water slow, get run off.

During the seedling stage I was told I was drenching them. Now not enough. I think I got it now. And I'm harvesting pretty big plants too, who woulda thought haha.

I have 2 grows going. Incase this post seems confusing lol.