@Stunger made a tutorial on how to make cob. That explains the process in photos. Very good.
The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It
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Exactly. You use the environment and physics to control the pace and moisture level you want to process your bud at.
I put them in a closed container (takeout salad size for me, standard size shipping container for Gee. Probably) along with a hygrometer. I use one like the combo thermometer/ hygrometer I have to check my overall environment.
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Gee64
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TMSC - Day 10.
The whole gang.
Iklwa.
LC - 18.
RVDV 2.0
RVDV 1.0 making a comeback.
Wild Lady 2.0.
Wild Lady 1.0.
The whole gang.
Iklwa.
LC - 18.
RVDV 2.0
RVDV 1.0 making a comeback.
Wild Lady 2.0.
Wild Lady 1.0.
Thirvnrob
Well-Known Member
All of your posts should be preceded by "grab a coffee". I'm lurking & learning...Hehe grab a coffee.
They don't really work together. I use VPD to dial my light in. I set the ambient temp, then the humidity, then I slowly add more light over the course of a few days until I have a 2 degree difference in the leaf to air temperatures. I take my readings about 10 hours after lights on. I don't use it on seedlings, they have no roots yet, so they just get warm, humid, and slow for awhile until rooted.
As I dial in the light intensity I may have to raise or lower humidity to speed up or slow down VPD until it is where I want it.
I had never used PPFD until this grow, so when Jon explained it too me, I figured why not increase the light a bit and see. It took my leaf temps up a bit high but I figured I would give it a day or 2 to see if it settles in. It didn't.
So in the end, VPD is a much more reliable safe method of dialing in your light than just arbitrarily picking a PPFD value and setting it.
VPD will tell you what light intensity is correct for the stage of the grow you are at, a number you assigned as a PPFD target.... not so much.
Now that I know Durban Poison likes 1000PPFD I have a starting point for my next DP grow, but every strain wants a different PPFD so 1000 may not work for these TMSC seeds, or your grow. Every strain that I have ever grown does like the same VPD rates through the stages of development though.
To be honest, I'm getting away from PPFD for initial setup and going back to VPD. I will track PPFD for sure, to know for future grows, but I don't want to run CO2, so going over what VPD dictates is pointless. It causes stress and deficiency.
Your environment is Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. PPFD won't find the balancing point of the 4, but VPD sure will.
So after setting air temp and humidity, you just adjust the light to find the 2 degree difference as the grow progresses, and if ambient air temp is good, you control speed thru humidity.
So pick a room temp and pick a humidity to compliment your current stage of grow, and then slowly turn your light up until at the highest point in the day (about 10 hours after lights on) you are at a 2 degree differential between leaf and air temps.
Then take a PPFD reading so you can quickly dial in VPD next time. Then wiggle humidity to dial VPD in to perfection. If you get a temperature spike, raise humidity. If a cold snap lowers VPD, add heat or lower humidity. The light doesn't need to move unless the 2 degree rule gets compromised.
So what does VPD really do? I hear a lot of good growers toss it in the ditch saying it does nothing useful.
Well it does do 1 thing that is kinda important. It matches the amount of light needed to drive a plant under the current air temps, to the maximum speed it's rootball is capable of maintaining, without over driving the plant and causing the rootball to not keep up and form a deficiency, and on the other side of the coin, it stops you from under performance, as you may not be pushing your plants to the maximum the roots can sustain, so you are under achieving.
It also gives you a throttle. If you are going to do some stressful stuff, like topping or pruning or de-leafing (ouch!) add a bit of humidity the day before, slow them down a bit, stress them with your procedure, then a day later wind them back up.
Don't ever go as high as 1.5. You may think you are a good enough grower to handle it, and your plants are tough enough, and that could be 100% true, but one temp spike or an AC stopping, and your leaves are compromised for the remainder of the grow, so try to not exceed 1.45.
And thats in late flower when everything is rolling perfectly, not 3 weeks into veg when it should be .5. You haven't got a rootball big enough to feed high photosynthesis yet.
And the best part, you can adjust quickly, easily, and daily, to what the rootball is capable of.
So if you don't over rev your plants and a potassium deficiency shows up, its ACTUALLY a potassium deficiency, not a reaction to exhaustion. Less tail chasing.
Now you can run your plants at the proper speed and adjust future soil builds to support those proper speeds.
Higher VPD means faster transpiration. Faster transpiration means more water flowing thru the plant so more food as well.
If photosynthesis is working faster than that flow (light is too close) a problem will arise as you need supplies from the roots to photosynthesize. A deficiency occurs.
Now that the plant can't photosynthesize properly, heat builds up in the leaf and light poisoning begins, (but you will get a batch of free feminized seeds) as the plant can't defend itself at that speed.
Or it's all too slow, your soil is always wet, and your plant has bugs as a result.
A well fed plant under optimal environmental conditions won't have damaging pests.
Other than being the throttle to the entire grow, it doesn't really do much.
So in a nutshell, I will use VPD to set my light intensity, then take a PPFD measurement for a reference point. Definitely not the other way around.
This may lead to lots of questions about VPD so ask away and let's kick it around.
It's actually really simple in concept and application, but incredibly complex as to what you can do with it.
Why wouldn't you want full control? Isn't that why you came inside? for the environment?
To not optimize it?........ well outside is free.
And if you use CO2, or want to, all good CO2 meters are tied to VPD.
The wrong VPD with CO2 will yield less than no CO2 on a properly grown correct VPD plant.
If you are using CO2, you better know what your stomata are doing.
And don't panic if VPD is way out an hour after lights on. Plants raise their leaf temps in the dark to close the gap between leaf and air temps to regulate transpiration in the dark.
Check VPD any time you like, but make adjustments only on the 10 hour reading. Thats the fastest VPD of the day, the one you don't want to exceed.
VPD is THE only reason my last disaster of a grow gave me such stellar buds. Even after leaf damage I maintained the plant at it's fastest possible safe speed for the leaf damage that had occurred. That and the fact that I still had al 9,456,321 leaves left to draw from.
Never did use them all.
Gotta go bigger next time I guess, there was still gas left in the tank.
That's going to be the title of his new thread.
Hey @Gee64, Happy NYE!
So when you get around to your auto project, here’s a heads up that @con turned me on to that I would strongly suggest you consider when buying your seeds. I had never heard of these guys:
ButterBeanBirdseed? Out of Canada? I had never heard of them. Well go there!
You have got to see their auto selection. I’ve never seen anything like it. Amazing crosses. Tons of sativas. Tons of indicas. Nothing below 25%, several (most of them!) 29-30+%!!! They even tell you the breeder parents, like Mephisto this x Barney’s Farm that or whatever. It looks almost too good to be true, and it’s certainly cocky. I am potentially in love. Gonna try them for sure. As cynical as I am about weed marketing, I find there IS a connection between the quality of descriptions and site and the quality of the seeds. I’ve never used these guys but in two days I’m ordering several strains from them.
You familiar?
So when you get around to your auto project, here’s a heads up that @con turned me on to that I would strongly suggest you consider when buying your seeds. I had never heard of these guys:
ButterBeanBirdseed? Out of Canada? I had never heard of them. Well go there!
www.ButterBeanBirdseed.ca
You have got to see their auto selection. I’ve never seen anything like it. Amazing crosses. Tons of sativas. Tons of indicas. Nothing below 25%, several (most of them!) 29-30+%!!! They even tell you the breeder parents, like Mephisto this x Barney’s Farm that or whatever. It looks almost too good to be true, and it’s certainly cocky. I am potentially in love. Gonna try them for sure. As cynical as I am about weed marketing, I find there IS a connection between the quality of descriptions and site and the quality of the seeds. I’ve never used these guys but in two days I’m ordering several strains from them.
You familiar?
One of the ways you can tell they know what they’re doing is by looking at the strains they choose as parents. There is no crap here. They seem to use largely classic, long term established, very stable, genetic parent strains.
Says shipping within Canada only. 
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Gee64
Well-Known Member
Happy New Years Eve Everybody!
. Anyone know where I can get a bag of weed to celebrate with?
. Anyone know where I can get a bag of weed to celebrate with?
Yeah. I know a guy. Just had a great harvest. His stuff is still a little green and uncured, but it looks awesome! Name is Gee-something. I can look it up if you're interested.Happy New Years Eve Everybody!
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Gee64
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Shorty #2 jarred in at a finished 178g, 6.27oz. Still on par for a little over 1.5 lbs
So @Gee64 , what do you think?
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Gee64
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The pink pheno is tubbed and down to 72%, it's actually in a small tub as per @Jon style, and the Macehead pheno is tubbed at 79%.
I need to get it down lower before I sweat it in a smaller tub. It's a stubborn one. It will take at least another week of sweating and venting to get it into jars, probably a bit longer.
Pinky should be about 3 more days.
Shorty #1 is really good stuff. I popped a nug off the lower end of a cola cut to fit in a canning jar.... It was really nice for less than a week in the jar.
Thats a good thing seeing that I got 2 of them totalling almost 13 oz's.
I need to get it down lower before I sweat it in a smaller tub. It's a stubborn one. It will take at least another week of sweating and venting to get it into jars, probably a bit longer.
Pinky should be about 3 more days.
Shorty #1 is really good stuff. I popped a nug off the lower end of a cola cut to fit in a canning jar.... It was really nice for less than a week in the jar.
Thats a good thing seeing that I got 2 of them totalling almost 13 oz's.
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Gee64
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I'm a huge fan of low and slow. There's still a lot going on in the plant after harvest, and the longer you can keep it moist without mold, the better the cure is my experience.
Plants that get dried on the quick side, like when you vent a tub and accidentally leave it open all night, tend to be coughier and harsh. I notice a big increase in how hard it hits after a good cure too.
I hang until the smallest buds start to crunch when you bend their stems, then I sweat them for at least 48 hours.
At that point they are usually in the mid 70's for RH. After a sweat they may get vented for an hour, or even rehung. That process goes on until about 68-69%, where I am putting it in a smaller tub that it just fits into without squishing. Then it gets burped until 64%.
At that point it gets jarred for a week and then burped to 62% where it sits until it gets used. All give and take, kinda-sorta, as the numbers move a bit from plant to plant but those numbers are my targets.
By leaving the buds on their main stalks as long as possible, you slow down the overall drying rate and need to sweat more to pull the moisture out of the stalks and into/throughout the buds.
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Gee64
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I just checked my notes. It took 15 days from chop to jar for each of the Shorty phenos. They are still 64-65% in the jars.
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Gee64
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I got a new carbon air scrubber a couple weeks ago so I dismantled the old one. I got 5 gallons of used charcoal from it.
I am going to make my own biochar with it. I'm not a biochar expert by any means, so if anyone wants to weigh in here with thoughts/advice/experience, please please please do. Once it's in the soil you can't take it out so I need to consider options 1st.
So here is what I am thinking....
Apparently worms will flock to biochar when added to a worm farm, they actually love it that much, so that is where I am going to innoculate it.
I am thinking .5 gallons biochar per 5 gallon tray in the worm farm, so EWC that is 10% biochar would be the outcome.
Then every time I build a new soil I will add 25% biochar-ewc to the 1st build, and that soil will become 2.5% biochar.
Biochar lasts forever and you don't want too much, so if/when you add it, you need to keep track of it and of that batch of soil.
If I like what I see then next rebuild I will raise the 2.5% to 5%. 5 gallons of biochar gives me 50 gallons (45 actually, as you lose a bit to the worms) of bio-EWC.
That's enough to innoculate 200 gallons of new soil at 2.5%, or 100 gallons at 5%, or 50 gallons at 10%. So I'm thinking that if I make 45 gallons of bio-ewc and use it to topdress this 40gal pot, that eventually I could get it as high as 11.25% biochar.
I have no idea what a good % of biochar would be, but it retains water really well so above 10% would likely get soggy.
So am I on the right track using the worm farm to innoculate it?
and what % of a pot do you think is optimal?
I like 5% myself, but I have never used biochar so.....
I am going to make my own biochar with it. I'm not a biochar expert by any means, so if anyone wants to weigh in here with thoughts/advice/experience, please please please do. Once it's in the soil you can't take it out so I need to consider options 1st.
So here is what I am thinking....
Apparently worms will flock to biochar when added to a worm farm, they actually love it that much, so that is where I am going to innoculate it.
I am thinking .5 gallons biochar per 5 gallon tray in the worm farm, so EWC that is 10% biochar would be the outcome.
Then every time I build a new soil I will add 25% biochar-ewc to the 1st build, and that soil will become 2.5% biochar.
Biochar lasts forever and you don't want too much, so if/when you add it, you need to keep track of it and of that batch of soil.
If I like what I see then next rebuild I will raise the 2.5% to 5%. 5 gallons of biochar gives me 50 gallons (45 actually, as you lose a bit to the worms) of bio-EWC.
That's enough to innoculate 200 gallons of new soil at 2.5%, or 100 gallons at 5%, or 50 gallons at 10%. So I'm thinking that if I make 45 gallons of bio-ewc and use it to topdress this 40gal pot, that eventually I could get it as high as 11.25% biochar.
I have no idea what a good % of biochar would be, but it retains water really well so above 10% would likely get soggy.
So am I on the right track using the worm farm to innoculate it?
and what % of a pot do you think is optimal?
I like 5% myself, but I have never used biochar so.....
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Gee64
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I think cutting the biochar with perlite 2 to 1 char to perlite, before going through the worm farm, will bring the extra air those extra microbes will need. Just to keep balance. If it was coco instead of char, thats what it would have gotten for perlite.
Ok, thanks. That about what I do. I bud wash and then hang until the outside of the buds feel dry then I put them in a closed container to check humidity. Once it gets below 70% I start sweating them down to 62 (close them up overnight, open them for a hour or so the next day and repeat). Once at 62 I jar and burp them briefly twice a day for a couple of weeks and then once a day for a couple of weeks and then seal them up.
Biochar is easy to make yourself if you're so inclined, but 5 gallons is a lot on hand as it usually gets mixed at no more than 10% of your mix.
I'd do some research on using the activated char from a filter though as I'm not convinced it's the same, tame stuff. My understanding is that to activate it they apply chemicals to the char itself and I'm not sure those chemicals are safe to ingest. Not saying they're not, but I just don't know.
I'd do some research on using the activated char from a filter though as I'm not convinced it's the same, tame stuff. My understanding is that to activate it they apply chemicals to the char itself and I'm not sure those chemicals are safe to ingest. Not saying they're not, but I just don't know.