Undercurrent DWC Grow Journal

[Wingman420]

Thanks ed my Holiday was Aces! I appreciate the info about nutes and additives and could spend all day talking with you about these. Maybe some day we will organize a trip to the Dam, do the crawl and get to meet. Until them I will try to catch up and appreciate your patience.

 

[NEPharmer]

This is off subject, but have any of you had plants from seed not show pre-flowers? I got ten going now, but it seems like they should have shown sex by now.

 

[farmer.ed]

I have had this a few times with certain hybrids. I take small cuttings let them root a few days and flip them to 12 right away. I start all my moms from seed so I try to keep them in heavy veg conditions, a bit stressed to see if they show early. The only way I can be sure I am not wasting my time and money, is to flip a cutting and push it hard to flower. I have pushed too hard and hermed out my girls, so I learned to only test a cutting at a time.

 

[NEPharmer]

Thanks Farmer, I was about to try that, but was hopeing I wouldn't have to. I've been running this same strain for a while, but now I'm useing seeds from a plant that I let get pollinated in an outdoor grow a few years back. Maybe that has something to do with it, I'm not sure why it would, but oh well. Might be time for some new genetics, I could use a little variety anyway. Thanks again, and sorry for going off topic. Peace

 

[NEPharmer]

Where did ya go? I hope I didnt hijack your thread by asking a question. Sorry if thats the case, I was hopeing for an update. I hope all is well! Peace

 

[farmer.ed]

HI NEPharmer, sorry I have to wait to get to a better connection before I can upload photos, I have them on my personal webserver, but can't upload to the forum, I am on wild blue satellite and only has 2kb upload so it times out before a photos is uploaded. Anyway I have been very busy cleaning up from the last storms, we have had floods everywhere here combined with snow, sounds like I am close to you guys. All the girls are doing fine, I will hopefully get to a better connection to catch everybody up to my journal.

 

[GodSpeed]

Hi farmer.ed

Yeah i have been getting same problem with uploading piccys crap speeds here in uk Been taking pics so wen its better sig can upload some.

Your set up looks extreme man wish that was sat in my yard ha how much you think u have spent on the complete system you got there? and how does your autopilot work?

So is this grow just using dutch pro nutes?
Just wanted to know how your getting on with them atm and are u using leaf green?
Do u get much flux in ph and how often do u need to add more nutes to your res?

Sorry about all the questions just very inspirational work

 

[NEPharmer]

Glad to hear your all good, I was getting worried! We got about 21" by me, so I'm sure it kept you plenty busy, if your in my region. I'm looking forward to your next update, I'm sure things have changed quite a bit! I've found 4 fem's and got rid of 2 males so far and I'm waiting on 4 more to show sex. Their getting huge, but their all tied down lst style. anyway, stay safe, peace

 

[Tmac12]

NE 21" is a lot of snow... are they saying you gonna get hit again? We got 5" but expect much more soon, im in very west nc mountains. We expect to be snowed in.

 

[farmer.ed]

Hi Everyone, I finally had some time to catch up this weekend. As you can see by the first pics, we had a bit of flooding here in SoCal along with a bit of snow. I moved to southern California to get away from the cold and snow. Anyway as you can see I had a few girls outside for flower in a 4 foot deep pit with shade cloth. These babies are still hanging in there, and are totally purple right now. They survived 17f (FREEEEZING), 12" rain, 72 mph wind and a full on assault of yard toys washed in with the flood. I got these seeds from Reserva Privada Amsterdam, they are OG #18, Kosher Kush and some Jedi from clone. I will let you know if they make it through the next storm on it's way.

Back to the real reason you are here

Sorry for lack of updates, I will give a run through the last 14 days.

I strained the water and filtered with 50 micron flow through filter, added 12 gallons of r/o water which brought my ppm down to 109 ppm, safe to say it is pretty clean water and very bio activated. After adding the companion Bacillus subtilis bacteria pack 18 days ago, the foaming has finally stopped and the system is entirely treated. I added my first round of Dutch pro starting with grow.

Dutch Pro day 1
100 ml Take root
100 ml Multitotal
100 ml Grow A
100 ml Grow B
ppm 574
ph 5.8 (added 15ml ph- grow from DP)
temp 21.7c

Day 2
ppm 413
ph 5.9
temp 19.2c
Nothing added

Day 3
ppm 341
ph 5.9
temp 19.1c
150 ml Grow A
150 ml Grow B
50 ml Take Root
100 ml Leaf Green foliar

Day 4
ppm 602
ph 5.8
temp 19.4c
nothing added trimmed and super cropped

Day 5
ppm 537
ph 5.9
temp 18.8c
50 ml Multitotal
50 ml Take Root

Day 6
Did not check in

Day 7
Did not check in

Day 8
ppm 364
ph 6.4
temp 20.4c
5.2 gallon r/o water
100 ml Grow A
100 ml Grow B
10 ml ph- (grow)
50 ml Take Root
75 ml Multitotal
100 ml Leaf Green foliar
35 ml Calmag

Day 9
ppm 642
ph 5.7
temp 19.6c
25 ml Socal biochar Bugs
50 ml Companion Bacillus subtilis

Day 10
ppm 527
ph 5.8
temp 19.3c
nothing added super cropped and topped

Day 11
Did not check in

Day 12
Looked in while lights where off, all looked well so I left it for the day.

Day 13
ppm 498
ph 6.2
temp 19.3c
made up the following but did not add today, I built a brewer so I wanted to see if it made a difference to bubble it out for a bit first.
5.5 gallon r/o h2o
100 ml Grow A
100 ml Grow B
75 ml Multitotal
100 ml SoCal biochar Bugs
15 gr Sodium Bentonite clay
20 ml ph- (grow)

Day 14
ppm 420 ;-)
ph 6.4
temp 21.5c
Nothing added just super cropped and trimmed

Day 15
ppm 383
ph 6.5
temp 22.1c
This was my morning inspection around 08:00, I added 2.6 gallons of brew around 11:00 turned on the chiller and checked again around 4:20

ppm 744 (pretty hot)
ph 5.4
temp 18.2
Nothing else added

Day 16
ppm 602
ph 5.5
temp 19.3c
That brings us up to today, I will add the photos to sort of be in the same time line. I will be checking in on them later this evening so we will see if there is any damage or growth from the brew. With this type of system you can usually see any damage within minutes.

 

[farmer.ed]

Hey Godspeed, I was going to answer you in my post but I hit save instead of preview, had my morning meds. Thanks for your interest, I usually buy them from cch2o.com, this system is not much cheaper than buying from Dan. The total system as sitting cost about $1300 with shipping and taxes, sourced from the web. I have built them as cheap as $600, but not with quality pumps and seals. This system as with all I install has a bio autopilot, the system is conditioned and reconditioned with beneficial bacteria and biochar. The biochar holds enough beneficial bacteria and nutrients to keep the plants alive with no electricity for 6-8 days, not many systems can say that. Anyway i also build out modified reef keeper PLC driven peristaltic pumps with ph +- and Nutes A&B and a 35 gallon make up res as an alternative autopilot for $1100 or so.

Dutch Pro, well this is my first time running them and I am partial to running them very dilute until I can see how they react to DWC. I have posted my daily reports which should indicate pretty stable ph so far, I do not plan on changing the water when changing to flower, only diluting down to <50 ppm. I will see if there are any large changes in the flower nutes holding ph. So far so good on the leaf green, it has been applied over the last 16 days at 100 ml misted on all surfaces 3 hrs before lights on. I do like the result, it is adding a plumpness to the leaves and also defining the stoma (seen under 400x). I hope to get a full trial in on these products, I plan to change over to 12 next week after my seedlings have better roots, the clones are well past ready to go.

 

[NEPharmer]

Looking good, I was just wondering why your planning to swich over so early, with this system, I would think you would be aiming for larger plants. Am I missing somthing?

*and I'm not sure where you are, but I'm in MA and were expecting another 12" to 18" on Wednesday. Seems like this will be another brutal New England winter. Oh well. Stay safe fellas! Peace!

 

[farmer.ed]

Hi NE Pharmer, no you are not missing something, I am flipping them over very early for the test data, I usually veg 7-9 weeks then flower, however this is a test for the nutes and a quick tutorial on the system. I am anticipating another week of veg . I currently have 4 clones and 3 seedlings which have barely taken root, so I am waiting a few more days for them to catch up. I know people will hang around the journal for a bit, but if they don't see buds or disasters, their interest declines. For this grow I am following their feeding chart which is 2 weeks veg and 8 weeks flower. I don't anticipate yielding much per plant, I shoot for a z per and that is good enough for test data.

I am just finishing up my new UCDWC 35 (new journal coming up), very similar to this system just using 35 gallon drums instead of 8 gallon buckets and 6" piping a 50 gallon epicenter fed by a Supreme pumps 3200 gph. I am just playing around with incorporating old water treatment hardware into new tree hugger friendly DWC and aquaponic toys. I have a huge never ending supply of this type of hardware so I salvage a bit of everything to make cheap test systems. I plan on growing Grandaddy Purple trees in the 35's, veg time is close to 8 months and if done correctly should supply perpetual harvests over 16 weeks or so. Undercurrent has a new 35XXXXXXL coming out really soon, it should be on display at the Vegas show in February.

**I am about 37 miles north of the mexican border in Southern California near Palm Springs, we don't usually get too much snow here, a flake every few years, you can imagine what traffic is like here if there is a dusting on the road.....

 

[GodSpeed]

Thanks for the update .ED sorry to hear about the flood not good at all! Grow is looking great as usual and growth looks fresh!

When i got my nutes i had a feed chart it say that second week of vegative the EC should be 1.8 excluding your waters EC mine being 0.5 that makes it 2.3 second week of vegative that would be about 1000ppm that sounds insane to me.
I had a few problems with my girls going abit lime green so i used some supernatural green and stay seems to of worked for now.

My computer is still to slow to upload pics not happy but i have a collection to upload soon.

 

[farmer.ed]

Thanks Godspeed I will pass the compliment onto the green girls.
Yes 1000ppm for veg is pretty insane, I pushed mine up into the 750+ and they seemed to love it, I have no buffers at all so I tend to run my mixtures very dilute until I see how they like it. I do know a few people that are running long term veg with heavy 16, after month 6 they boosted from 550 up to 950 for the last month of veg, when changed over to flower they were brought up to around 1700ppm with a dilute mixture of bloom for the last two weeks of veg, last 5 days of veg in the dark, then onto a res change and right back to 1700+ppm on an autodoser incrementally bringing the total into the 2000+ range by week 6. To each his own I guess, seems like a waste of nutes and lots of un needed stress. I do have to say the final product was very nice but took much longer to cure.

 

[farmer.ed]

Hi everyone, I have been on some other forums checking in on UCDWC, it seems like people are finally catching on and loving the system. What I have seen is everyone having trouble dialing in the system for the first time.

To be successful and not wind up with a bucket of sludge, the system needs to become a small bacteria filled eco/bio system. The alternative to this is 100% sterile environment under laboratory procedures without the use of UV and chemicals. The latter is out of reach for most of us growing in less than 100% sterile grow rooms. It is much cheaper and a lot easier for us to inoculate the entire system with bacteria and pro biotics prior to planting.

Proper food must be provided for the bacteria to flourish, it is more important to feed the bio system then it is to feed the plants during dial in. Once tuned the bio system will directly feed the plants with a more available nutrient in sub ionic form.

It is best to start these systems off with organic nutrients and compost tea's and change over after the system is dialed in eco/bio wise. Starting organically will provide enough real food for the pro biotics and beneficials to begin colonization in your grow media and in a floating colony of biochar or a scumball in the epicenter.

The easiest comparison I can create visually is your roots have mouths the size of an ants, regular nutes before chelation (the formation of organic acids and micro organism breakdown) are the size of a golf ball to the ants mouth, after chelation and further bio breakdown the nutes are bite size for the ant. So it is important to make a biosoup that can assist in post chelation to further make the nutes more available. The benficials and pro biotics will start your root zone off in the right direction and proper feeding of bacteria will also keep the entire system clean and free of root disease.

I hope this helps provide some insight to life inside the buckets.

 

[farmer.ed]

 

[farmer.ed]

 

[farmer.ed]

 

[farmer.ed]