Undercurrent DWC Grow Journal

[SnowBender]

Nice.
Subscribed.

 

[Wingman420]

What's up ed? I see you are up and running quite smoothly. We all look forward to your grow. I wanted to ask because I was smoking Panama Red back in the 70's if you saved the seed or was it acquired?

 

[farmer.ed]

Hey Wingman, yes all is running smooth, I am out of town so it is on autopilot till I get back, i will be sure to post all updates with pics. The Panama Red was the strain of the summer in 1979, i was in charge of floor sweeping at the time for a repack house. I managed to save up a LARGE bag of mixed seed that year. Panama Red, Acapulco Gold, Purple Sage (from 1981) Columbian hybrid seems like columbian gold with panama red, they stand about 14ft outside. Anyway send me a pm we can chat.

 

[NEPharmer]

Wow! sounds like you got a nice stash of some quality bag seeds. Those are all sativa strains right? I'm only 30 years old so I never had the privlage to smoke any of those legondary strains, but I've been hearing my buddies from work brag about them forever! They allways claim that the strains they used to smoke back then was the best ever. I just think they havn't been able to get any good sativa buds in a long time because indicas and hybrids are more suitable for indoor growing. But anyway I'm really interested in watching this grow!

 

[farmer.ed]

Hi everyone, sorry for the long pause, I had to go back east to the freezing cold for a week. Anyway I basically left the system on autopilot just to see what it would do unsupervised for a week. I added some cold processed squid before exiting, about 20ml, that stuff stinks really bad for a day. Well as you can see from the photos, some are booming others are a bit necrotic. I have been running the same water since startup and it is time for a good cleansing of the system and get it back in tune.I am very happy with the root growth as of late and will dial down the temp of the water to around 65-66f this will stop the algae build up on the buckets. After a week running the water is 283 ppm, 6.12 ph and 74f, so with the flushing today I will add 55 gallons of r/o water ph to 5.8 and will bring the ppm up a bit to around 400, then add a bit in a day or so to get it around 600 ppm of compost tea and some heavy 16 veg a&b. I will post the additions when finished. Enjoy

 

[Wingman420]

home Ed.

 

[farmer.ed]

Thank you very much, been a cold trip. I left Amsterdam because it was just too cold in the winter. Glad to be back in Socal

 

[Light-1-up]

What's up farmer,

You got a little bit of everything growing there.
Great job man!

It must be nice to have some warm weather. I have lived where I do for all my life and after over 25 years of dealing with winter year after year. I only like it to go sleding..

 

[Wingman420]

What's up farmer,

You got a little bit of everything growing there.
Great job man!

It must be nice to have some warm weather. I have lived where I do for all my life and after over 25 years of dealing with winter year after year. I only like it to go sleding..

I live in RI 41* North, and Race Homing Pigeons. I have some friends there and long for a trip to Holland. Glad to have you back my friend, the plants will recover and I look forward to their progress.

 

[NEPharmer]

Im in MA, Im gettin sick of the cold. If MA doesnt get the med mj goin soon Im gonna hav e to move to a phriendlier state! Hows the RI med deal?

 

[farmer.ed]

Just a quick update, I attached the chiller a few days ago (from my pool) and I am now running it only when the normal pool cycle runs 6hrs per day. My girls are sitting in 65f, 5.91 ph, 678 ppm @500, after my clean up, I reupped the dosages to see how they would react, so far so good, I am getting a lot of needed color back into the leaves. All new growth is a nice Kawasaki Green and shows lots of promise. I am seeing that my Sour Diesel are performing the best so far, so I will pull the rest out and move them to something a bit more conventional (ebb& flow with sure to grow media mixed with biochar). As you can see from the pics, my lettuce seems to be too dialed in and over producing, I took down 388 grams of baby greens, nice lunch with grilled chicken and blue cheese. I will have to harvest the greens at least once every 7 days or so.

Bio sauce mix for clean up stress

50 ml Jamaican Bat Guano
40 ml General Organics cold pressed squid
25 ml Rhizotonic
25 ml House and Garden Roots Execel
50 ml Socal Biochar Bugs
1/16th tea spoon of Cash Crop Cobra Sprinkled on top of higromite

I also mixed up 35ml Heavy 16 Foliar spray into 1 liter r/o water and treated the girls to a nice fog of the nutes for 2hrs @ 3 micron spray size

I will let this run down to about 200ppm and I will filter my water with 100 micron flow through filter. This should remove any biosolids which can ferment from yeasts. I will be changing over my nutes to try out a run from Dutch Pro in NL, they were nice enough to send us about a 1500 liter selection to try. It seems that we will be the first to try it out this side of the pond, I will also use Dutch Pro in two other grows I have going on so we can see the differences with soil, coco and hydro. Anyway here are the pics Enjoy

 

[farmer.ed]

Here is a fly through video of the girls from a few days ago, I will be updating tonight when I have a bit more time. I have also attached a cool animation I found showing how the whole system works in very simple terms. Enjoy

weedgrower.com - under current DWC grow journal.

Here is the animation
YouTube - Under Current Deep Water Culture Hydroponic System: animated walkthrough

 

[NEPharmer]

Thanks for the animation! That helps alot, Im planing on building one of these after this run. I cant wait to see this beast in action! +reps for the helpfull video!

 

[farmer.ed]

Anytime NE Pharmer More than happy to help anytime, I am just glad there is finally a growing interest in this type of system. I live in SoCal, here in the desert it hits 125f on a daily basis, and goes as low as 20f. So for me and my local clients, this system is the holy grail, it keeps the plants stable and hydrated, we average 22% humidity here. If there is anything I can do to help you get started let me know.

 

[blacklips]

Looks like root rot or something....They are not very full or white?? here are my roots in dwc.....

 

[NEPharmer]

It may not be root rot, Ive used some organic nutes before that darkened my roots. Is there any oder to them? Maybe put some hydrogen peroxide in there just in case? Im sure you thought of that, but good luck, I hope it works out!

 

[farmer.ed]

Hi NEpharmer and Blacklips, no root rot just sludge from the organic nutes and compost tea's I have to untangle them a bit, I had too much agitation in the first buckets so they twisted up and collected the Bio weed and Bio Marine with some guano. Merry Xmas and happy holidays.

PS Nice roots Blacklips, they look very healthy what are you feeding with?

 

[Wingman420]

Looking Good ed, I must say you are not afraid to use guano with hyrdo I know that in my recirculating ebb and flow system that would be a problem and foul the res. I am soo looking to switch to this system and am watching carefully thanks brother. The Dutch Pro is that a 3 or 4 part system? I use H&G and like it but would change if worth the trouble. Chemical Nutes are OK but I do love Organics. In the past the best Organic nutes I have ever used were from Green Air Products back in the 80's it was a four part (micro base, grow 1, grow2, and bloom) still on the market today and unbelievably inexspensive, they are in Oregon. I am thinking of having a pallet shipped out here after the Holidaze. Please keep us informed about the nutes and your progress brother we truly look forward to your posts.
+Rep

BTW: I also thought Blacklips roots were ok for DWC and were the result of dyes or additives. Good advice and good looking out for Black he grows his ass off with some killer buds and is member we are all proud of.

 

[blacklips]

on that bucket I was using a Botanicare Pro, sweet,carboload,green fuse, budswell,superthrive and some AN bossters in bloom.. I would go to more of chemical clean mix if i ever did dwc again tho.. the Bat Crap and organics are just to messy!

 

[farmer.ed]

Hi Wingman, hope you had a great holiday, anyway I use a little bit of biochar and Companion Bacillus subtilis bacteria, it seems to keep the guano from fouling, I am using a slurry guano which I dry out a bit and add deep sea minerals from the university of Hawaii, it is desalinated but still maintains high salt count, I mix these together in r/o and let it sit with 4 air stones in it to excite the ammonium compounds and try to oxidize the mixture before adding. The foam on the top contains most of the harmful compounds of the salt so it is scooped off daily until there is none.

The Dutch Pro I am testing is a 2 part veg and 2 part bloom, there is also
ph+ bloom ph- bloom ph- veg (for proper buffing during adjustment of ph),
Leaf Green (vitamin foliar), Stay Clear (biobugs and cleaning), Take root (root kicker) and finally MultiTotal (booster pack). These nutes are far from Organic though, I love Bio Bizz for organic, they have their shit together and have 0 ego....just great no BS products.

Blacklips, that is a lot of chems your adding there, but they all seem to work well together, which is most important. I prefer the organic for my meds and veggies, my commercial days I was in your corner 100%, 200ml of this and 300 ml of that instead of gallons of this and gallons of that. I also preferred the nice clean res water and not having to scrub scum lines from my res.