The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It

[Azimuth]

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.

@Gee64 Your thoughts?

 

[Gee64]

@Gee64 Your thoughts?

Thats a tough question to answer exactly.

I usually find at about 2-3 all over is where wilt starts for me.

Your plants will likely wilt sooner because they are so used to wet soil.

So if it's that dry up top compared to the bottom, AND the plant looks unhappy, maybe you should spray and see if you can get most, if not the whole pot to 4-5 and see what the plant thinks, or a small topwater to try for a more even drying down.

Adding a good mulch will definitely help.

Then let the whole thing dry down to a solid 4 if possible, but don't stress them.

Ideally you want to top water and bottom water until harvest, but hold a perfect 5.

If 3 of the 5 probes make you think it's time to water then water, but if the bottom is still a 6 I would let them dry a bit more unless they are stressing.

Or you are stressing.

As long as you do a wet/dry cycle to find where the plant is happiest, and then try to stay there once stretch is finished.

If I can get my Durban to hold at 5.5 all thru flower, top to bottom in the pot, they are happiest.

You see now what oxygen does, and the plant isn't hurting.

So as long as you top water and bottom water,so calcium cycles and sip roots don't stress too bad, but only enough of either at any time so that 8 hours after watering you are in the green zone' you are good.

If 8 or 12 hours later the bottom is an 8 or 9 or 10, you are suffocating roots. Use less water or dry down more between waterings.

Every time they dry down they breath in, when you water they breath out, at the root level.

So far you have only seen improvement for your efforts, so hold there and wait for brix to stabilize, or dry down a bit more if the plant can handle it.

If you see wilt or stress you found the limit and don't go that far again.

Then breathe twice from top watering, and once from bottom watering.

Make note of how much you use from the top, and use that amount from the bottom.

Veg likes deeper breaths, flower after stretch likes constant correct moisture.

Thats part of the reason I don't mulch until vegging is done. Deeper breaths as they grow foliage. Faster wet/dry cycle.

 

[Azimuth]

Thats part of the reason I don't mulch until vegging is done. Deeper breaths as they grow foliage. Faster wet/dry cycle.

Ok. Thanks. Do you mulch right at flip then?

 

[Gee64]

Ok. Thanks. Do you mulch right at flip then?

Usually yes. Always by the time stretch is done. Here you go....

#2, she just got placed in the flower tent in Ikky's spot. Zoom in on the water stik. She got watered right after I took the picture.

#3 again zoom in. Day 13 of flower. She didn't get watered. She will and get mulch tomorrow. #1 is identical and will get mulch too.

#4 all alone in the veg tent. Zoom in, she got water today.

 

[Gee64]

Note the lack of wilting. Good carbon blended evenly with good roots managed by healthy myco. Breathe really deep girls. Stretch is coming.

 

[Gee64]

Organics translates to "of carbon base", it's important. It needs to be sequestered from air to soil to complete the loop. The carbon cycle. Outdoors in nature a plant will give itself perfect soil carbon for it's moisture gradient upon where the seed landed. It naturalizes.

 

[Gee64]

#2 is in the flower tent and tonight she goes to bed early. June 1st is her 1st Day of Flower.

 

[Gee64]

#'s1 & 3 - Day 13 of Flower.

Future colas.

Mutey - Day 60 of Flower.

She is finishing hard but her trichomes are clear and some just barely showing some milkiness. another 2 or 3 days likely.

Getting greener.

 

[Gee64]

#1 and 3 are 850PPFD at the top. I will stay under 1000PPFD all grow and target 950PPFD as my goal. If that's too much it won't be much too much, and if it's not enough, it won't be much less than adequate. Hopefully stress free.

The veg tent is 350PPFD.

I didn't measure #2 when she went into the flower tent, I will tomorrow, but she is down lower. I would guess 600PPFD.

 

[Gee64]

So Azi, I have a question for you, and you likely aren't going to be happy with the answer but I will ask it anyway.

Now that you see the value of oxygen, does this 1.6gal pot have a larger air dome than a 2gal SIP?

 

[Gee64]

The yellow leaves were on the clone when I cut it from the mother. They were green then. That yellowing is all the energy the clone needed to produce enough roots in the aero cloner to be planted. I aim for harvest with every leaf I started with. In 1.66gal pots its really hard. In 10gals its easy.

 

[Azimuth]

#'s1 & 3 - Day 13 of Flower.

Looks like you're count flower days from flip.

Now that you see the value of oxygen, does this 1.6gal pot have a larger air dome than a 2gal SIP?

Lol. Maybe a little.

 

[Gee64]

Looks like you're count flower days from flip.

I do because thats when it begins. Hormone signals trigger immediately when days get short. The clock starts ticking.

It's like a deficiency in a way. When you see a deficiency, it started 2 weeks earlier.

But it doesn't matter how you count it as long as it makes sense to you, and then follow the trichomes.

 

[Azimuth]

If 3 of the 5 probes make you think it's time to water then water, but if the bottom is still a 6 I would let them dry a bit more unless they are stressing.

If I can get my Durban to hold at 5.5 all thru flower, top to bottom in the pot, they are happiest.

If 8 or 12 hours later the bottom is an 8 or 9 or 10, you are suffocating roots. Use less water or dry down more between waterings.

I suspect the difference in drying is pot related. In your fabric pots they likely dry much more evenly with air coming from all sides, while with my plastic buckets and SIP reservoir, they dry more from the top down.

That's why I asked the question about averages. The top couple of inches will be bone dry before the bottom couple will have dried down to lower levels on the stick. So, with an organic grow where the ideal is even moisture, that doesn't seem too easy in my setup.

I can actually see some value in that dichotomy (for the plant at least) in that the upper roots will have drier soil to breathe while the lower roots can still access moisture. Then it becomes more of an issue of keeping adequate moisture up top for the microbes to stay active, but that can be a much lower level than I've been accustomed to.

I've never developed the water seeking roots in my buckets but rather get the fine feeder roots all throughout which has to be the air chamber providing adequate O2 to both not get root rot as well as not develop the thicker white water roots.

It will be interesting to see what the root ball looks like with this new approach.

Thats part of the reason I don't mulch until vegging is done. Deeper breaths as they grow foliage. Faster wet/dry cycle.

That makes sense. Also, my compost mulch is probably not even needed in veg since my plants look pretty good throughout. Your tactic of mulching at flip which then allows feeder roots to develop into that mulch probably acts much like The Rev's spikes in that there is an entire section of soil that hasn't been tapped yet. A ready reserve of goodness just as the plant gears up for flower.

 

[Azimuth]

But it doesn't matter how you count it as long as it makes sense to you, and then follow the trichomes.

I like to count from first early pom poms, so your day 13 above would be my day 1. That seems to line up better with breeder estimates, but it mostly helps me be more patient on the back end, and not harvest too early.

 

[Jon]

I suspect the difference in drying is pot related. In your fabric pots they likely dry much more evenly with air coming from all sides, while with my plastic buckets and SIP reservoir, they dry more from the top down.

That's why I asked the question about averages. The top couple of inches will be bone dry before the bottom couple will have dried down to lower levels on the stick. So, with an organic grow where the ideal is even moisture, that doesn't seem too easy in my setup.

I can actually see some value in that dichotomy (for the plant at least) in that the upper roots will have drier soil to breathe while the lower roots can still access moisture. Then it becomes more of an issue of keeping adequate moisture up top for the microbes to stay active, but that can be a much lower level than I've been accustomed to.

I've never developed the water seeking roots in my buckets but rather get the fine feeder roots all throughout which has to be the air chamber providing adequate O2 to both not get root rot as well as not develop the thicker white water roots.

It will be interesting to see what the root ball looks like with this new approach.


That makes sense. Also, my compost mulch is probably not even needed in veg since my plants look pretty good throughout. Your tactic of mulching at flip which then allows feeder roots to develop into that mulch probably acts much like The Rev's spikes in that there is an entire section of soil that hasn't been tapped yet. A ready reserve of goodness just as the plant gears up for flower.

I’ve been following this without comment but @Azimuth, I have a question. Based on everything I’ve read in this thread, it seems the downside to the SIP thing is exactly that you are confined to plastic pots. It won’t work with cloth correct? So it seems much of this is connected to even drying, and plastic is the last thing to provide that - top down as you note? Am I way off and if so I’ll slink back under my rock?

 

[Gee64]

Lol. Maybe a little.

If you set the cloth pot on a milk crate, the entire thing becomes an "airdome" and the deepest root is no more than 3.5" from air.

Because the roots need O2, when they sense it they split into multiple fine roots just as they do when they grow into a piece of carbon.

Air pruning.

Cloth pots are messy though, I have a flood tray on the floor.

Did you see the water stik readings? The one is almost zero and no wilting.

When you start with your 1st new plant that grows it's whole life in your new found drier, O2 rich soil, your microherd will be so strong that your plant will develop drought resistence.

It will have the lungs of an olympian.

It has so many roots each coated in bioslime (rhizosphere) and the abundant carbon is attached to the roots, so when the hallways are so dry the stik reads almost zero there is still no wilting.

That won't happen to that degree in a hard pot without air pruned roots.

If you stretched out a full 5gal rootball from a hard pot and measured full root length, it wouldn't even be close to that of a 5gal air pruned rootball.

I'm all about the roots, the plant is just a convenient side effect.

Roots breath 02 and exhale CO2, foliage breathe CO2 and exhales 02. It's a closed loop. So you do need both in balance.

The more air your rootball can breath in, the more foliage it can support.

Balance.

Now you can see the value of good air flow in your grow space. It needs to match what the plant requires.

If you took the entire planet and wrapped it in a big loose bag trapping it all in, plants would keep it working so everything wouldn't suffocate.

Hey wait a minute....

 

[Gee64]

I suspect the difference in drying is pot related. In your fabric pots they likely dry much more evenly with air coming from all sides, while with my plastic buckets and SIP reservoir, they dry more from the top down.

That's why I asked the question about averages. The top couple of inches will be bone dry before the bottom couple will have dried down to lower levels on the stick. So, with an organic grow where the ideal is even moisture, that doesn't seem too easy in my setup.

I can actually see some value in that dichotomy (for the plant at least) in that the upper roots will have drier soil to breathe while the lower roots can still access moisture. Then it becomes more of an issue of keeping adequate moisture up top for the microbes to stay active, but that can be a much lower level than I've been accustomed to.

I've never developed the water seeking roots in my buckets but rather get the fine feeder roots all throughout which has to be the air chamber providing adequate O2 to both not get root rot as well as not develop the thicker white water roots.

It will be interesting to see what the root ball looks like with this new approach.


That makes sense. Also, my compost mulch is probably not even needed in veg since my plants look pretty good throughout. Your tactic of mulching at flip which then allows feeder roots to develop into that mulch probably acts much like The Rev's spikes in that there is an entire section of soil that hasn't been tapped yet. A ready reserve of goodness just as the plant gears up for flower.

I smell the sweet smell of synergy starting to form

 

[Gee64]

So I'm not trying to flip you to cloth, you love Sips and this is your hobby, you deserve to love it how YOU want to love it.
No wrong way here unless it gets to be something you no longer love.

I want to change your Sip approach to improve it for you.

This is too big for you, so scale this idea down but....

What if you took a 2gal plastic pail and used a dremel or hack saw blade to cut away almost the entire bottom and 90% of the sidewalls, leaving only a skeleton of the bucket, flipped it over, pulled a cloth pot over it, and used that inside a 5 gal pail as an airdome.

Do you think your roots would now have more oxygen than a conventional Sip?

Synergize that.

A Sip for Los.

High brix too.

 

[Gee64]

Busy day today. I gotta "Fix" shit. I will be around but in and out.