TheFrizz Is Back! VC/DC, CBD Therapy & Northern Lights Medical Grow For Mom

[TheFrizz]

Great progress. What a plan, to have so many colas. How are your brixes? When you press the juice onto the refractometer you can see the blue/white line. The more blurry it is the more minerals are available to your plants. The Jenny is one fast grower! Keep it up, I'm interested and entertained.

Thanks Tomula! Also, great idea to check brixes, I will post a quick overview here and pics from my first time measuring brix today!

Alright folks, here is a bit of background info on brix in case you haven't heard of it before

Brix is a measurement of the amount of dissolved sugars and minerals in the sap of a plant. The nerdier definition is: "One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by mass"

It is considered by many to be a measure of the health of a plant, with higher values being desirable on a scale of ~0-30 degrees. The vast majority of data collected on brix is with regards to soil, because it originated in the 1800's as a way for winemakers to predict the quality of their vintage ahead of time. The higher the brix levels of their grapes, the better tasting the wine would be.

Fortunately, brix applies to every plant, not just wine grapes. Many organic soil growers can achieve brix levels over 20 in crops including cannabis. Anything over 12 is still considered quite good. From what I have read, regular supermarket produce routinely measures around 2-3 degrees brix, which is why it is lacking in both taste and nutrition. There is not a lot of information currently available on brix in hydro, but I have heard that hydro tends to result in lower brix in general compared to organic soil.

So how do you measure brix? Well with a handy tool called a refractometer! You squeeze a drop of sap from the fan leaves onto a glass plate which light passes through. Sugars are very large compared to water molecules and so they change the angle of refraction of the light as it passes through the glass. You read the angle by looking through the refractometer lens and finding the line where the white and blue meet.

Testing with a drop of distilled water to make sure it is working properly. Looks good! The reading is zero degrees because there are no dissolved minerals or sugars in the water. I took the picture by holding my phone up to the eyepiece of the refractometer so sorry if it's fuzzy

I pulled 3-4 medium/small leaves from each plant from the middle of the canopy. Then I used a garlic press to squeeze a drop from each plant onto the refractometer and record the value.

Jenny

Monique

Muffinz

Sidney

The values I recorded were:

Jenny- 7.5 degrees
Monique- 6 degrees
Muffinz- 10 degrees
Sidney- 10 degrees

At first I was upset because these values seemed low for how well the plants are growing overall. But then I did some thinking... I did some pretty heavy defol and bending on the girls 2 days ago and so they probably were using up their stored sugars (what was left, after I stripped off the biggest fans) to produce new growth and recover faster. Also, I have been feeding them at only around 300-400 ppm, and the growers that I have heard of achieving high brix in hydro (tomatoes and other veggies) use concentrations over 2k ppm.

Anyways, I plan on collecting brix data more frequently now that I have a starting point. My first goal is to get all of the girls above 12 degrees brix, and then see if maybe Sidney can push 20 in a couple weeks. Some of her leaves have that high brix shine already so I think she could do it I will first start by pushing the nutrient concentration closer to 1k ppm and see if that does the trick.

 

[Detsback]

Cool!

 

[imtoasted]

Very interested in seeing brix ratios to quality/yield ratios!

 

[DankestBuds42]

I believe one is air and one is water (RDWC)...as I have the same set.

Cheers I know of dwc but had to look up rdwc. Sounds awesome!

Ding ding ding!! Yep, the clear tube is for air and the black tube is for water.

Thanks for the feedback and warm wishes everyone! Now, it's true I said no updates on the flowering girls til after stretch but...I said no such thing about my other plants! So here's what has been going on with the other ladies...

Yaddle and Darth Yaddle are now living in my new 4x8 veg tent under the Perfect Sun 1000

I ran out of 5 gallon buckets so I transplanted Darth Yaddle into a black plastic cauldron which is quite fitting since she is a lady of the Sith, buckets are for puny Jedi! An amazing colleague of mine gave me this cauldron figuring I would have some sort of mad science teacher use for it. I do not think this is what she expected!

Bubbling nute brew...the other 3 air tubes feed into my hydroponic asparagus (which is growing about 6 inches vertically a day!!!)

I'll post a pic or two of Yaddle (her bottom half growing in soil) in a day or two. The end goal is for them to be manifolded to 32 colas each and each trained into a rectangular 2 by 4 foot shape. The two of them combined would fill up my 4x4 tent with 64 colas in flower.

Dank! A water pump will be next on my shopping list haha. Thanks!

I was surprised to see you post before your three week mark. A happy surprise though Using a cauldron as a grow container is hilariously creative imo. Love it. Bubble bubble, boil and trouble. Take these plants and make them double! (Who said witchcraft couldn't aid gardening lol) I like your plan of 64 colas. I can just imagine your tent filled up with monster buds Can't wait to see this in action!

I'm fascinated by your post about Brix levels. You got me really curious what the levels are in my garden haha. I like how you describe the process, makes it really easy to understand and replicate. If anything over 12% is quite good and grocery produce is usually 2-3%, then I would think you're already doing much better than most! Solid goal to start out with 12% across the board. You got this!

 

[TheFrizz]

Very interested in seeing brix ratios to quality/yield ratios!

Me too!! I am keeping all of my grow data in a spreadsheet on my computer so it will make the number crunching after harvest a lot faster

My prediction is that there will be an inverse relationship between brix and yield/plant mass at high levels. The reason is that higher brix means the plant has essentially less water weight and so the cells tend to be more compact. Thus fruit size begins to diminish as brix levels cross a certain point (this point depends on what is being grown). However, I believe that extremely low levels of brix would also decrease yield/plant mass. Somewhere in the middle is an ideal for each growth medium, methinks!

Imagine going to the grocery store- if you wanted to find the tastiest plum would you grab the biggest piece of fruit sitting on top of the display? No, it probably tastes like vaguely plum-tinted water and nothing like the flavor packed, sun kissed plums you used to enjoy from grammy's garden. A smaller plum with a more vibrant and rich color would be the ideal to look for. With this grow maybe I can start to look for the "sweet spot" where Brix is high enough to maximize plant vigor and bud quality but without sacrificing plant size (some waterlogging is nice for stretching, don't want my cells TOO compact! )

However, I think root mass has something to do with it also. Monique has a smaller and less robust root system for how large her plant mass is. This means she has less capacity to store and mobilize sugars and nutrients compared to Jenny, who has a massive root ball. This was reflected in Monique's low brix of 6, compared to Jenny (7.5). The two smaller plants both had brixes of around 10. They also both have excellent root masses that are proportionate to their size.

My prediction is that the sweet spot for my hydro setup will end up being between 12-16 degrees brix in terms of nute efficiency, growth rate, and quality. I will be collecting more brix samples tomorrow so we shall see how the girls liked their nutes (I gave them 5 gallons of Jack's mixed to 750 ppm).

Cheers I know of dwc but had to look up rdwc. Sounds awesome!



Dank! A water pump will be next on my shopping list haha. Thanks!

I was surprised to see you post before your three week mark. A happy surprise though Using a cauldron as a grow container is hilariously creative imo. Love it. Bubble bubble, boil and trouble. Take these plants and make them double! (Who said witchcraft couldn't aid gardening lol) I like your plan of 64 colas. I can just imagine your tent filled up with monster buds Can't wait to see this in action!

I'm fascinated by your post about Brix levels. You got me really curious what the levels are in my garden haha. I like how you describe the process, makes it really easy to understand and replicate. If anything over 12% is quite good and grocery produce is usually 2-3%, then I would think you're already doing much better than most! Solid goal to start out with 12% across the board. You got this!

Thanks so much for the feedback! Yeah I am super pumped for the cauldron hehe Basically I am trying to recreate my first grow with 2 plants instead of 4. And no net!

As far as the posting before 3 weeks, well, I said I wasn't going to post any more pics of the flowering tent until the girls were done stretching. But I can still collect data from them and post pics of my other plants

We'll see how this Brix stuff goes, I expect to see the levels climb here as they recover from defol and absorb the higher dose of nutes I gave them last night If you want to get started, a refractometer is only ~20 bucks or so and is a lot of fun to tinker with! You are a mad scientist like me so I know you would enjoy using one

 

[imtoasted]

Yea that all makes a lot of sense frizz im sure there is a sweet spot.. im sure you will find out what that is soon enough!

 

[Tomula]

Hey Frizz! Nice presentation with the brixes! The girls are gonna get better. I think calcium is your friend and try some silica. The brixes are simple. If you got an apple with say 16 on scale and apple with 10 you are gonna taste the difference for sure. Same with the cannabis. I wish you good luck.

 

[TheFrizz]

Hi folks! Brix update Thanks for the suggestions Tomula!

Last night I added 5 gallons of Jack's mixed to 1700 ppm, which brought the overall ppm of the reservoir to ~750 and the pH to 6.05. This is about twice as high as the concentration was before.

My bf also did some extreme bending on Sidney to spread the colas, but no defol. Other than that, no changes were made since the last brix recording.

Here are the brix screenshots for today:

Looking good, between 10-11 degrees overall except the last one...but here's the plot twist...it was Sidney! Her brix went from 10 down to 7 in just two days even though she looks absolutely stunning and her leaves are thick and glossy. How can this be? She looks the "highest brix" out of the 4 of them but hers was the lowest recorded today...

Well, my theory is that this is because of the bending my bf did on her last night, which caused her to use up her stored sugars to repair the stem damage. None of the other 3 plants were touched during the last 2 days and their brix levels either stayed the same (Muffinz) or went up (Jenny and Monique).

My other data point to lend credence to this idea is the low brix values (7.5 and 6) of Jenny and Monique 2 days ago. While we performed general defol on the whole tent a day or two prior, we did heavy bending on just Jenny and Monique. On April 18th you will get to see pics of what I mean by that but suffice to say, it's pretty intense! It makes sense to me that the plant would prioritize repairing its major stems and would shuttle sugars out of storage to help out in the emergency Thus, a lower recorded brix value due to the fan leaves "empty cellars", so to speak.

This will be an easy observation to test for and replicate. I will defol and bend the plants on separate days to see how these techniques affect their individual brix levels. I am expecting to see defol cause a minor drop in brix (1 degree) and heavy bending/cropping a larger drop (2-4 degrees) for a day or two until they recover.

The nice thing is that at least they are all receiving the same nutes at the same temp under the same light in the same tent. Thus, variations in brix between them are unlikely to be due to any of those environmental factors, buuut rather, due to genetic differences and individual plant training.

 

[imtoasted]

Re: TheFrizz Is Back! VC/DC, CBD Therapy & Northern Lights Medical Grow For Mom

Hmm i see thats its going to be tough to get an accurate brix reading.. looks like with those factors in play the readings dont seem 100% accurate due to all that sciencey stuff you said. Hopefully you find the median where it seems to be more consistent!

With that being said looks as if your plants are on the right track to having the 12-18 brix level you are looking for! Keep up the good work.

 

[GreatWhiteBud]

Amazing, the correlation between the stress and extra expended energy and the loss of brix does make sense when you think about it though. Fascinating, keep up the good work!

 

[TheFrizz]

Hi folks, tonight's update will include my predictions for the brix measurements tomorrow and my reasoning for the predictions. Then tomorrow I'll measure brix and we can see if my theory holds true!

Jenny- Prediction: Between 8 and 9. I figure her brix might have gone up to 12 or so over the past few days but we bent the heck out of her and Monique tonight so they will be in recovery mode when I sample them tomorrow.

Monique- Prediction: Same as Jenny, between 8-9 because she will be recovering from her training performed tonight.

Sidney- Prediction: Between 13-14, she looks so glossy and rich and it has been a total of 4 days since her last training. This seems like enough time for the brix levels to rise again.

Muffinz- Prediction: Between 11-12, she looks healthy but she lacks the shine that Sidney has. She has not been bent or defol'd for almost a week now so her brix levels would have no reason to drop below last week's measurement.

Anyhoo, we'll see what the numbers say tomorrow! Maybe I'm right and plants use up stored sugars to repair tissue damage. Or...I could be totally wrong and need to modify my theory, but that is just fine with me because that's what authentic science is all about

 

[TheFrizz]

Brix data collection #3!

Well, I was partially right, here are the results:

Jenny: ~7.5
Monique: ~9
Muffinz: ~9
Sidney: ~11

Keep in mind that the night before this I performed severe bending/cropping on Monique and Jenny so I expected those two to have the lowest brix this round.

All across the board the brix was lower than I was expecting, except Monique. I think I know why, I checked the pH and the water was at 730 ppm with a pH of 4.8!!! Yikes!! A pH that low would have been inducing a nutrient deficiency in the plants. This would cause the plants brix levels to decrease.

However, if this was the case, then why wasn't Monique's brix down to 7 ish as well? I trained her just as vigorously as Jenny the day before. Well, perhaps Monique's levels remained so high despite her recent stem crunching because I had not defoliated her for a very long time and so she had more reserves stored in her fan leaves than Jenny.

Regardless, my quest for knowledge shall continue! I really want to harness the technique of using brix as a way to time training so that you do it when the plant is "fat" with sugar and ready to power a new growth spurt

In 3 days (the 18th) it will be 21 days since flipping the lights to 12/12. Then you guys get to see what the girls look like after 3 weeks!!! Keep in mind, my vision is to forge all 4 plants into a single, cohesive, self-supporting scrog. I have still not used a single wire or string this grow, simply bending the plants with my hands is sufficient to achieve the final shape I want

 

[imtoasted]

Awesome thanks frizz those are some interesting results indeed..

 

[TheFrizz]

Awesome thanks frizz those are some interesting results indeed..

Thanks, it is definitely interesting to see patterns start to emerge, and to reflect how in the "real world", science rarely follows the clean, scripted results that are obtained in labs during school. This experience reminded me of one of my college professors, he summed up his research with this line from Coldplay's The Scientist:

"I was just guessing at numbers and figures, pulling the puzzles apart".

^^^ That right there is authentic science at it's core

 

[DankestBuds42]

Thanks so much for the feedback! Yeah I am super pumped for the cauldron hehe Basically I am trying to recreate my first grow with 2 plants instead of 4. And no net!

As far as the posting before 3 weeks, well, I said I wasn't going to post any more pics of the flowering tent until the girls were done stretching. But I can still collect data from them and post pics of my other plants

We'll see how this Brix stuff goes, I expect to see the levels climb here as they recover from defol and absorb the higher dose of nutes I gave them last night If you want to get started, a refractometer is only ~20 bucks or so and is a lot of fun to tinker with! You are a mad scientist like me so I know you would enjoy using one

Hey there Frizz, how've you been? Sorry about the delayed reply. Been a crazy busy at work. Usually just flop in bed after work and sleep until my next shift haha. But it's my weekend now, so catch-up time! If you go from 4 plants to 2 then I can only imagine how big they'll get with all that extra wiggle room! No net sounds very hassle free. I like it.

Roughly 20 bones for a fancy refractometer? Sold. You got me really curious about brix levels now. If it effects taste and quality of fruit then it sounds like a worthy experiment imo. Mad scientists for life! I'm just figuring things out as I go along but I really liked when you said "I really want to harness the technique of using brix as a way to time training so that you do it when the plant is "fat" with sugar and ready to power a new growth spurt". That sounds pretty fantastic and smart. I support your ingenuity hardcore.

Very intrigued by your Single, Cohesive, Self-Supporting Scrog. Can't wait for your next pic updates
That's sick you're in flower cycle! Let pistil action commence! Stay golden homie.

 

[Tomula]

Hello Frizz nice photos as always. I see you got some nice blurry line with the last one, that means lots of minerals and micro nutes is available. She likes what you give her. I wish you good luck with them as you got still ways ahead. But that can depend on the strain/plant and not an easy way to treat others.

I still stand by the soil because I think you simply can give her nutrients and care, but she simply cannot give back to the soil and it can make her unhappy. Plants communicate with their environment/Earth via roots and smells. They also give half the energy from the sun and carbon from CO2 back to the soil, where it belongs. The living soil is then happy and gives the plant something in return- happiness included. And that is the nature of Nature- giving. The more you give the more you get back. Do not expect something in return, because that's not always immediate. Also the getting back has many forms, sometimes from unexpected sources and not immediately. But to not receive is unnatural too. Like when someone offers you a helping hand and you reject it you not only make him unhappy, you also make things harder for yourself. Learned the hard way... Haha still learning every day. Too much from me? You decide.

That been said I like what you are doing- and all the effort and care, which is fresh and rewarding (sooner that never). Haha cheers to you and keep up the great work.

 

[imtoasted]

Thank you for those words of wisdom tomula.. they will help me get through my second half of work on a monday, much appreciated my good sir. Interesting thats what the blurry line means with the brix reading.. makes sense it would have a wider range though.

 

[TheFrizz]

Hey there Frizz, how've you been? Sorry about the delayed reply. Been a crazy busy at work. Usually just flop in bed after work and sleep until my next shift haha. But it's my weekend now, so catch-up time! If you go from 4 plants to 2 then I can only imagine how big they'll get with all that extra wiggle room! No net sounds very hassle free. I like it.

Roughly 20 bones for a fancy refractometer? Sold. You got me really curious about brix levels now. If it effects taste and quality of fruit then it sounds like a worthy experiment imo. Mad scientists for life! I'm just figuring things out as I go along but I really liked when you said "I really want to harness the technique of using brix as a way to time training so that you do it when the plant is "fat" with sugar and ready to power a new growth spurt". That sounds pretty fantastic and smart. I support your ingenuity hardcore.

Very intrigued by your Single, Cohesive, Self-Supporting Scrog. Can't wait for your next pic updates
That's sick you're in flower cycle! Let pistil action commence! Stay golden homie.

Hiya Dankest, happy "weekend"! Thanks for the comments, it is definitely much easier this grow not having to deal with a net. Instead of Jenny growing into the light I just flatten her out, problem solved! Last grow each cola was tied into a square so I couldn't really change the plant shape past the stretch.

You should totally get a refractometer too, the more data we can collect, the more everybody wins! Most importantly, refractometers resemble a miniature lightsaber. So you can have lots of fun waving it around making noises like "whoooozzzhhh, bzzzzzoooo, pew pew pew!!"

Hello Frizz nice photos as always. I see you got some nice blurry line with the last one, that means lots of minerals and micro nutes is available. She likes what you give her. I wish you good luck with them as you got still ways ahead. But that can depend on the strain/plant and not an easy way to treat others.

I still stand by the soil because I think you simply can give her nutrients and care, but she simply cannot give back to the soil and it can make her unhappy. Plants communicate with their environment/Earth via roots and smells. They also give half the energy from the sun and carbon from CO2 back to the soil, where it belongs. The living soil is then happy and gives the plant something in return- happiness included. And that is the nature of Nature- giving. The more you give the more you get back. Do not expect something in return, because that's not always immediate. Also the getting back has many forms, sometimes from unexpected sources and not immediately. But to not receive is unnatural too. Like when someone offers you a helping hand and you reject it you not only make him unhappy, you also make things harder for yourself. Learned the hard way... Haha still learning every day. Too much from me? You decide.

That been said I like what you are doing- and all the effort and care, which is fresh and rewarding (sooner that never). Haha cheers to you and keep up the great work.

Hi Tomula, thanks for the input on the blurry line and your ideas regarding soil and plant happiness very poetic, I will have to re-read it tonight after a

I agree that we want the friendly bacteria, other critters, and the plants to work together to create a stable and thriving ecosystem in the grow medium. I think that my res is more "alive" than the average hydro grower because I have not changed the res for months and I have been adding humic acid to provide organic matter. This would increase the proliferation of bacteria compared to a more "hygenic" system with clear water, pure chemical nutes, and res changes every couple weeks.

It would be fun to get a microscope and compare: "dirty" hydro (my way), "clean" hydro (regular flushes, no organic matter), organic soil, and chemical based soil growing. Which method would have the greatest abundance of life (bacteria and microbes) in the grow medium? I would assume organic soil would win, but I wonder how close I could get with "dirty" hydro...

 

[imtoasted]

Frizz how do you not get mold and crap built up in your system without cleaning it.. main reason why i wont mess with hydroponics is cause the mold in my area seems high and i just choose to advoid the inevitable. Worried about bud rot indoors tbh lol

 

[Latitude17]

Frizz how do you not get mold and crap built up in your system without cleaning it.. main reason why i wont mess with hydroponics is cause the mold in my area seems high and i just choose to advoid the inevitable. Worried about bud rot indoors tbh lol

I was about to ask the same thing! Especially Pythium (root rot)? . I'm assuming a city tap water base with just enough chlorine to keep it dead while your "good" stuff takes hold.

Frizz does have the gift of the grow.