The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It

[Gee64]

13.5 with a fuzzy line, though seemed less fuzzy than last time but I'm not convinced I'm a consistent reader of that thing yet.

The plant was one day over dry as I was losing some leaf turgor so I gave it 12.5% down the fill tube and I'll go up top with it next time it needs it.

High brix baby! Say goodbye to Mr Thrips

So your brix increased 170% in 2 weeks just by correcting moisture, or more to the point, opening up oxygen to the microbes. They aren't even really healthy yet, give it another 2 weeks while they multiply.

Now is a good time for a myco drench if you have some to spare. Lack of O2 comprimises myco and if microbes explode and myco can't keep up the microbes may kill off too much myco.

Almost wilting isn't a bad thing right now, it forces root growth and it forces myco to up it's game.

What did the water stick say at the almost wilting point?

Now lets see what your potions and crumbles can do.

Your calcium potion may be required until you have dolomite cycling thru your mixes.

Start at 50ppmish if you can, top watered is best.

That root drench homogenized your calcium into your pot but it could be borderline low now too.

Start a calcium regiment and follow it with the refractometer.

I would start with 2 top waterings in a row, then go every 2nd watering at 50ish ppm. If the line gets nice and fuzzy then back off to RO water and see how quick it crisps the line.

Find your rhythm of how often. If you can keep calcium fuzzy and the water stick in the green you, will achieve maximum brix for what your mix can do.

Do an exploratory 5 point probe and check for dry spots again. It may require another root drench in the next week or 2.

You need to watch for it closely until roots penetrate the dry zones and then they will stay moist.

 

[Gee64]

They should be starting to terp the room up. Every day for the next 2 weeks may be a little smellier than the day before

I hope your ready for that.

 

[Gee64]

All 4 clones got top dressed today. They got 3 tbsp of Gaia Green Power Bloom and 1/2 cup EWC scratched in and sprayed with RO water.

Next, when they dry down, will be some dolo water followed by fish ferts.

Pots this small are on the brink of deficiency all the time.

Only 7 1/2 weeks to go. What could go wrong?

 

[Gee64]

It does beg a question though. I’m sure we would agree that the only way to do legit comparison stuff on a strain is with clones, yes? So if they suck as you say (ok, I buy that easy), is there ANY way around using clones to do a legit comparison? I’d love to do one with the Skywalker. But I hate clones. Lmao.

Sorry Jon I just saw this now. There is a way around it sort of. Most strains only have 3 or 4 main phenotypes, so if you grow out 20 or so seeds and divvy them up into what phenos do what you can get a general feel for them, but not as accurate as clones are in comparison.

 

[g-one-three]

So for Azi's sake directly, and all other sippers too, there's a burning question you all must have.

"Why does Sipping work so damn well until stretch is over and then go cowshit?"

The answer is tied to nitrogen.

Nitrogen is protein, protein is amino's.

Think of aminos as Lego blocks. You have a box with every lego block ever made. Millions of each and none stuck together. When you stick a few together to make something new, like a car, thats a protein.

Microbes can pull the proteins apart to make the car into anything else but it's limited to whats in the car, not the box. So you need soil nitrogen and atmospheric nitrogen over a plants lifetime.

Carbohydrates power cells. They are fuel. Cells are factories that make things out of aminos/proteins. Browns are carbs, greens are proteins.

From now on when I say proteins, amino/proteins is implied.

So to answer the question.

"Why does Sipping work so damn well until stretch is over and then go cowshit?"

Veg is the time we grow foliage, it requires massive amounts of lego blocks. Stretch even more. You use tons of nitrogen, both atmospheric and from greens.

The assimilation of nitrogen requires huge amounts of water and it needs to stay in the plant longer, so Sips which supply vast quantities of water, are fantastic thru veg and stretch.

Once stretch is over the plants requirements for nitrogen, thus water too, plummets. So now all that water is in the way when the plant needs air for flower.

The problem is, if you let the Sip dry down now, it bites you because you built a veg machine with massive water roots that grew a huge robust plant, and now if you stop the over watering the plant needs 2 weeks to develop feeder roots.

It's exactly the same as a Sip stall at 1st uppotting, just building different types of roots. You only have 8-10 weeks for flower, 3 were used for stretch, so 5-7 weeks left.

If 2 are used up for stall time you get 3-5 weeks for flower. You lose 40% flower time. All that veg for a low yield. A smaller plant with feeder roots will now grow more flowers than a huge Sipper that loses 40% of it's flower time. Denser buds too. Better terpenes as well.

Nitrogen requires a huge amount of water, flower requires a huge amount of air.

The remedy.... fill the reservoir thru the soil so feeder roots are established early, and the runoff caught in the res will recharge the soil carbon.

Don't refill the res again (thru the soil or the filler tube) until the soil is dry enough to need watering.

Think of your filler tube as an air intake, because it is. It's not a water intake unless you are using synthetics.

To allow more water in the plant in veg you simply raise RH so it moves thru the plant slower instead of overwatering to try to keep up to what nitrogen requires for water needs.

Thats why you lower RH in flower, to lower nitrogen intake. Once the plant is built you only need a few lego blocks to build terpenes and resin.

Too much water in flower raises nitrogen, brix crash, and bugs move in.

It's counter intuitive to the plant so it's DNA/RNA takes over, and it releases terpenes to tell bugs it's sick and needs to commit suicide to become compost so it's siblings can use that space to try to perpetuate the lineage.

Synthetics can't create strong brix because without live soil, exudates aren't required, so the plant tries to commit suicide and humans start to defend the sick plant with bug spray. Too much water is the same.

As Azi just found out, a great looking beautiful plant isn't nescessarily healthy on the inside.

If you have bugs your plant has decided it's health isn't good enough to reproduce healthy offspring.

So back to basics... Most plants are loved to death via overwatering.

Now go read Emilya's "How to water a plant" thread with this in mind and make your Sip promote health and feeder roots, not demote health and hydroponic roots, or switch to synthetics and "get hydro results from a soil based medium."

LOS doesn't use water roots in annuals, only perrenials put down a water tap. Then they put out feeder roots up top in the surface zone where leaves fall.

Cannabis is an annual vegetable. It's "tap root" is for support to grow huge in 1 season without falling over.

Or just switch to cloth pots. They are designed to build feeder roots and are a much bigger air chamber, they just dry out quicker.

Hi Gee, @Azimuth pointed me here because I experienced exactly what you described. Gang buster veg, calcium deficiency after the stretch. My first grow only 1 of three plants experienced the post stretch deficiency, however in my current grow both plants experienced deficiency's after the stretch. I was able to remedy most of the issues by top watering the SIP's like you described and it looks like I'll have an ok harvest.

I was thinking back to my first SIP grow and why 2 of the 3 plants showed no deficiency but were grown in the same SIP setups. It occurred to me that those 2 had their soils mixed at the same time and I added more perlite to them because the bagged soil seemed to be little light on it. Throughout the grow these 2 plants were constantly drying before the 3rd which was showing CalMag spots and leaf burn. Could the extra added perlite in those 2 plants make that kind of difference or did I just get lucky?

Either way thanks for writing this in a slightly dumbed down way so that I could make heads and tails of it. Plus I was a Lego kid growing up so I can relate .

 

[Azimuth]

Almost wilting isn't a bad thing right now, it forces root growth and it forces myco to up it's game.

I'm a week into flower so I'm assuming new root growth is running out of time.

What did the water stick say at the almost wilting point?

2-3ish.

Now is a good time for a myco drench if you have some to spare. Lack of O2 comprimises myco and if microbes explode and myco can't keep up the microbes may kill off too much myco.

I have Great White which can be applied in water.

Your calcium potion may be required until you have dolomite cycling thru your mixes.

This is the Dolo water you mentioned? I'd imagine my WCA would work similar but last time I used it I got the calcium spots, though that could have been coincidence. I have the prilled dolomite lime on order.

I would start with 2 top waterings in a row, then go every 2nd watering at 50ish ppm. If the line gets nice and fuzzy then back off to RO water and see how quick it crisps the line.

I have rain water, not RO, but can run with that.

Do an exploratory 5 point probe and check for dry spots again. It may require another root drench in the next week or 2.

Interestingly I had one spot that was still moist while the rest of the pot was consistently dry which is why I waited that extra day to water. I added through the fill tube directly into the reservoir so today's readings will be interesting to see how the wicking went.

 

[Gee64]

Hi Gee, @Azimuth pointed me here because I experienced exactly what you described. Gang buster veg, calcium deficiency after the stretch. My first grow only 1 of three plants experienced the post stretch deficiency, however in my current grow both plants experienced deficiency's after the stretch. I was able to remedy most of the issues by top watering the SIP's like you described and it looks like I'll have an ok harvest.

I was thinking back to my first SIP grow and why 2 of the 3 plants showed no deficiency but were grown in the same SIP setups. It occurred to me that those 2 had their soils mixed at the same time and I added more perlite to them because the bagged soil seemed to be little light on it. Throughout the grow these 2 plants were constantly drying before the 3rd which was showing CalMag spots and leaf burn. Could the extra added perlite in those 2 plants make that kind of difference or did I just get lucky?

Either way thanks for writing this in a slightly dumbed down way so that I could make heads and tails of it. Plus I was a Lego kid growing up so I can relate .

G13, Welcome
It's 2 things at play really. One is lack of oxygen because the soil is too wet.

Extra perlite can definitely lessen this, but it can also add to it too. Perlite is porous so it can move air or water.

So as it dries down it can move a lot of air and it drains well. That means if you let your reservoir dry down, your soil will drain from the top down as the reservoir drops, and that pulls air in from the surface, but when you fill the reservoir again, capilliary action will raise the water up thru the perlite and push the air back out the top, so the key is the water stick.

Wait until your soil needs water, then only put enough in the reservoir so if it becomes too wet on the water stick, 12 hours later it isn't.

Any longer and you added too much to the res, and really you should shoot for 8 hours tops.

The 2nd is calcium. Its heavy and sinks. It's also extremely mobile in water, so soil too wet and calcium falls out the bottom.

So you need to add it up top and top water it in, or add calmag to the reservoir, which will work but calcium is heavy and is easier to let "fall" thru the soil than raise from the bottom, plus top watering grow feeder roots.

If your soil has been too wet you will have hydroponic roots so the reservoir may be a better approach to fix a deficiency, but moving forward on new grows, filling the reservoir by allowing it to catch runoff from well areated soil is better.

Then there is soil carbon. It absorbs water. Lots of it.

It's job is to run your CEC and retain water. Water mixes with bug poop in the soil and absorbs into carbon to be held as soup until roots suckbit dry, and it's the CEC, so as they suck it up, cations get pulled into the soup too.

Too much carbon and soil gets soggy. Not enough and it needs too many waterings. Just the right amount and it is just right.

Different carbons have different densities so hold different amounts of water. Wood holds more than coco or leaves, etc. There are different charts all over the net.

Different carbon sources have different carbon:nitrogen ratios. The higher the carbon number the more water it will hold.

So denser carbons need less in a pot, less denser means you need more in a pot. Carbon takes up room so it's a juggling act to balance carbon size in the pot vs food size, and perlite also takes up space, so it's linked in too.

The juggling begins, but by using a larger pot you can accomodate this too.

So balance once again is key.

I prefer coco or aged composted wood. Coco is best IMO because it releases K as it decomposes, but it needs to be fully replaced every rebuild.

Fine aged bark recycles better but more perlite is needed as it's denser as each speck of it holds more water. So I prefer 10gal pots over smaller ones to accomodate more perlite.

This is where following a reputable recipe simplifies things, and if your plant gets hungry before harvest, use a bigger pot next time.

It's all about balance on every front.

So here is an important thing to remember.

Soil is porous by nature. Those hallways in your soil can hold air or water.

Water in the hallways replaces air.

You need to run water thru the hallways to recharge the carbon with water, but all the water in the hallways needs to drain out after the carbon is rehydrated.

That combination of wet carbon and dry hallways ensures both air and water are abundant.

Any piece of food that can't be attached to an oxygen molecule can't be recognized as food, so water in the hallways can and will lead to starvation even if the pot is full of food.

That's what happened to Azi. He was trying to fix it by adding and adjusting food.

I showed him that draining the hallways was what he needed to do.

Balance.

Hope that helps

So add calcium up top, run it thru the hallways, and let the reservoir catch the runoff. Then use a water stick to monitor.

If the soil is too wet 8 hours later, you have water in your hallways, drain the reservoir.

Measure how much water you add and how often until you dial in your practices for the recipe you are using.

Then if you are in LOS, start chasing brix.

An analog refractometer will tell you your brix reading, and it also tells you the state of calcium.

A dollar for a cheapo water stick and $25 for a refractometer is money well spent. It leads to cheap fun

 

[Gee64]

I'm a week into flower so I'm assuming new root growth is running out of time.


2-3ish.

Ok too dry, 4 should be the minimum.

I have Great White which can be applied in water.

Perfect

This is the Dolo water you mentioned? I'd imagine my WCA would work similar but last time I used it I got the calcium spots, though that could have been coincidence. I have the prilled dolomite lime on order.

Dolomite will definitely work, but your WCA may too. Dolo is balanced with mag so it's likely better, but once you get good at this, I smell a side-by-side

I have rain water, not RO, but can run with that.

Rain water is excellent

Interestingly I had one spot that was still moist while the rest of the pot was consistently dry which is why I waited that extra day to water. I added through the fill tube directly into the reservoir so today's readings will be interesting to see how the wicking went.

2 spots still moist remember. But really just poke around, if it's all 5's and a couple 4's its almost time. Until your roots spread into those original dry spots, I would water a bit sooner on the top waterings so they don't redry below 4.

You will learn to read the plant and the water stick will just become a tool to verify with, but once a week poke it into at least 5 spots and each spot at 3 different depths.

When your mix gets the right balance of carbon and aereation it will get easier to manage.

I suspect your mix is excellent, it was just too wet. Follow the brix and watch the calcium line.

50ish ppm if you add calcium to the water.

 

[Gee64]

So a disclaimer.

It seems as tho I am passive aggressively dissing on Sips. I AM NOT. Just to be clear.

Once a management system is worked out for them, in my mind, they are a great thing.

What they do lack is air intake.

Cloth pots beat them hands down in this aspect.

It would be really cool if the Sippers could find a way to prove this wrong and give us all a better way.

TBH I think the answer lies in a cloth pot swick.

Or a really wide flat sip with tons of air dome surface area close to the pots upper surface area.

Old school growers still prefer wider flatter pots so maybe they are onto something?

 

[Gee64]

Here is a note on clones.

They work better with synthetics than with organics, unless you veg them for a really long time.

The reason is phosphorus.

From seed a plant builds phosphorus for about 8 weeks until it is ready to flower, from clone most root, veg 2 or 3 weeks, then flip.

Organically speaking you simply don't have enough P cycling up and down the plant. Brix become limited.

In synthetics brix are irrelevant, but you can pour all the P in that you want, and buds swell better.

The reason I put up with Azi, is because I think one of his magic elixirs may bridge this gap.

We shall see....

 

[Gee64]

From the bottom of my weed meal container in the freezer. .

It's roughly 2.5 grams with some plant matter stuck in it.

Too potent for me but I have buddies that are foolish

 

[StoneOtter]

Mine seems to flip flop between sweet lemon and pine. The last couple days it's dropping the sweet, and settling on lemony-pine. It smells really nice and it's really strong.

After some early testers of RVDV which were excellent, I can't wait to try Ikky.

I opened my bucket of LC-18 last night and got a giant faceful of sweet earth! I thought you'd like it!

I got my soil started today. My base mix before ammendments is 1 part used soil, 1 part The Answer Soil (aged bark, sphagnum moss, a touch of small perlite), 1 part EWC, and 1 part perlite.

I make 20 gallons per batch. I won't have enough used soil until next week when I harvest Icky and/or Mutey. I am 2 gals short for each of the 2 batches.

Calciums per batch (20gal) is 3 cups prilled dolomite lime, 1 cup prilled gypsum, and 1 cup oyster flour.

Then ammendments.

So what I did today was mix 2 batches of the following:

5 gals perlite
5 gals The Answer Soil
3 gals used soil
1 cup gypsum
2 cups dolomite
1 cup oyster shell flour

I mixed it in the cement mixer really well and back into the tubs with a few litres of water sprinkled on.

When Icky or Mutey gets chopped I will add in 2 more gallons of used soil in each tub bringing each tub to 15 gallons, and add in the last cup of dolomite, then mix in the mixer and back to the tub and if the water stick says it needs water I will top it off and cook it in for another week to let the calcium start 1st.

So after 2 weeks from today, I will add in 5gals EWC per tub and all the ammendments, mix again, adjust moisture, and cook for 6 weeks. Mixing every so often.

With ammendments that usually finishes at about 22 gals, and I perlite by eye at uppotting with usually about 2 more gals per tub, so in the end I usually have about 4 gallons per tub left over when I fill 2 10gal bags. I use the extra in the veg tent.

All 4 clones in 2gals and the Tortured Souls all got topdressed today. 3tbsp per 2gal. A dusting in the solos.

Here are the solo's. The green is spreading.

I think they are going to live

These so called programmed ones are interesting! I'm glad they survived and am wondering!

 

[Gee64]

I opened my bucket of LC-18 last night and got a giant faceful of sweet earth! I thought you'd like it!

You haven't steered me wrong yet! I look very much forward to my next grow. Soils a cookin'

These so called programmed ones are interesting! I'm glad they survived and am wondering!

I don't know if it's a real thing or not, but fun to check it out.

If they do better than the aero clones I guess it's a thing.

 

[Carmen Ray]

If they do better than the aero clones I guess it's a thing.

Ummm, shouldn't the research be a little more rigorous than a single comparison of this nature? Surely there are a few potential factors that could play a part in one set doing better than the other? Sorry to be a spoil sport but I'm so skeptical of this idea. In fact I think it sounds like nonsense and I need a strong argument to persuade me there is some truth to it

 

[Carmen Ray]

And morning Gee man and co

 

[Gee64]

Ummm, shouldn't the research be a little more rigorous than a single comparison of this nature? Surely there are a few potential factors that could play a part in one set doing better than the other? Sorry to be a spoil sport but I'm so skeptical of this idea. In fact I think it sounds like nonsense and I need a strong argument to persuade me there is some truth to it

I agree, and I don't know if it's true or not, so the experiment begins.

 

[Gee64]

And morning Gee man and co

Good morning, well afternoon for you, Miss Carmen️

 

[Azimuth]

But really just poke around, if it's all 5's and a couple 4's its almost time. Until your roots spread into those original dry spots, I would water a bit sooner on the top waterings so they don't redry below 4.

And that's an average about halfway down the medium or all the way to the bottom? My mix is roughly 6" deep and I measure at about 2" increments. I haven't yet added my compost mulch layer so the top layer to dries out fairly quickly (2 on the stick) while I'm still getting 4's a couple of inches down and 6-8's 6" down.

------

Also, I was listening to a grower discussing organics in small containers and who mentioned the Coots Mix. He stated that perlite was his second favorite aerating input, behind humus.

I know castings can be dense and certainly need aeration, but what are your thoughts on humus as an aerating input?

I wouldn't have thought that would work but if it does that would certainly fit with what I'm trying to do.

 

[Gee64]

And that's an average about halfway down the medium or all the way to the bottom? My mix is roughly 6" deep and I measure at about 2" increments. I haven't yet added my compost mulch layer so the top layer to dries out fairly quickly (2 on the stick) while I'm still getting 4's a couple of inches down and 6-8's 6" down.

------

Also, I was listening to a grower discussing organics in small containers and who mentioned the Coots Mix. He stated that perlite was his second favorite aerating input, behind humus.

I know castings can be dense and certainly need aeration, but what are your thoughts on humus as an aerating input?

I wouldn't have thought that would work but if it does that would certainly fit with what I'm trying to do.

I've never heard of it being an aerator. It's carbon. It holds water. I think he meant its his favorite ingredient and perlite the aerator is his 2nd fave? Listen again. Got a link or title I can google?

 

[Gee64]

As in his favorite ingredient in a pot is humus, and perlite is his 2nd fave. That would be exactly what I would say.