Weasel Forges Ahead
- Thread starter Weaselcracker
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dynamo1
Well-Known Member
i never really climbed down from the peak of mt. stupid ..
i'm gonna quote that for every deficiency question that pops up in the faq from now on ..
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- #4,046
The sprayed PC plant.
The STS limb isn’t doing much. The CS sprayed limb I accidentally broke the end off last night (it was very brittle) but there’s a bit of the branch left I’m still spraying.
The GA treated limbs are still doing the magic beanstalk routine and seem to be growing at least an inch per day. Now over two feet long and way past the actual real/former top of the plant which is at the front/left in the pics.
a couple pics from last night.
A couple pics from tonight.
The GA branches used to be regular small lower branches. They start from down where my hand is.
A PC1 in early/mid flower.
The right side.
An accidental pic I took last night when I was trying to adjust the camera settings. Might be good in the FAQ for my
deficiencies.
I got a mini review on some of the Mega Crop I gave away.
“Mega crop (mega Crap) tried it on my plants , turned leaves yellow ,spotty & burned tips
Mixed 3 grams -1 gal of water & diluted to 50%
Used it on vegging plants 1’1/2 tall & my smaller SweetZ clones even gave some to my Mandeville clones later as a test ( green leaves started to get orangey red spots)
Not sure what is wrong with it”
There’s a monkey here too.
The STS limb isn’t doing much. The CS sprayed limb I accidentally broke the end off last night (it was very brittle) but there’s a bit of the branch left I’m still spraying.
The GA treated limbs are still doing the magic beanstalk routine and seem to be growing at least an inch per day. Now over two feet long and way past the actual real/former top of the plant which is at the front/left in the pics.
a couple pics from last night.
A couple pics from tonight.
The GA branches used to be regular small lower branches. They start from down where my hand is.
The right side.
An accidental pic I took last night when I was trying to adjust the camera settings. Might be good in the FAQ for my
deficiencies.
I got a mini review on some of the Mega Crop I gave away.
“Mega crop (mega Crap) tried it on my plants , turned leaves yellow ,spotty & burned tips
Mixed 3 grams -1 gal of water & diluted to 50%
Used it on vegging plants 1’1/2 tall & my smaller SweetZ clones even gave some to my Mandeville clones later as a test ( green leaves started to get orangey red spots)
Not sure what is wrong with it”
How do I get back up there? it was waaay more fun! That other way where everyone went is pretty much totally bullshit dude I checked and like it goes on super far. And looks deadly boring. Keep throwing down those empty beer cans I’m trying to build a ladder.
There’s a monkey here too.
Up until you said empty beer cans there was..... 
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- #4,048
The grower’s heroic head continues to bash against the cruel brick wall of destiny.
Mostly been busy working on my organic mix but I finally got that together a few days ago and (hopefully) cooking. I pray it will be the answer to all my grow problems.
My other main sport as usual has been wrestling with the hydroponic devils.
Thanks to the input of Daniel Fernandez, hydroponic wizard and creator of Hydro Buddy, I’ve learned a lot in the last week.
By the way, I’d really encourage anyone growing in any sort of hydro style to check out his blog, which you can easily find by searching his name and Hydro Buddy. Lots of very helpful info there contained in short (mostly) painless articles. Everything from nutrient tips, to how to make your own ph calibration solutions, to how to buffer a nutrient mix or reservoir so it will stay stable at whatever ph you choose, supposedly for months, and all sorts of other cool info.
He has confirmed my suspicions that peat moss is a pretty treacherous medium to try to grow in hydroponically. It makes me feel a lot better about the struggles I’ve been having with the deficiencies.
Peat is not all one thing to begin with. And whatever that thing is- is not inert and keeps changing. The handful of lime we use to try to control its acidity is also not inert or stable- it wears out over time, and adds unknown amounts of calcium and magnesium to the mix as it does. Of course this is all quite obvious, but I’m a very slow realizer.
I think the peat will work out better in the LOS mix, which is pretty much just like a festering compost heap already, so the peat can go ahead and break down as much as it wants in there. Though I do feel like the LOS could benefit from having some true mineral soil added in it as well someday, but what do I know? Not much....
You can see the white fuzz that’s started to grow on top. I take that as a good thing in this case.
My Atreum lights are still in the mail. I was going to set them up in the grow tent I bought for the purpose. But... I figured out yesterday that the tent is not 68” tall, as the guy I bought it from claimed. It is 84” tall!
At the time I bought it the tent was disassembled and in a box so there was no way for me to measure it.
I told him that I only had 70” to work with (the low side of my angled ceiling). He swore it was 68”. I have a feeling he was just telling me what I wanted to hear.
Ahh well can’t win ‘em all. I’ll make do some other way.
For the purpose of clearing space for the Atreum lights I chopped four plants yesterday which was bit gruelling. Two Chocolate Mint and two Durple Pream.
Durple Pream has a cool sort of rainbow colour to it. Not spectacular, but nice, and a nice grapefruit smell, and is a nice crisp frosty type of bud to work with. So that’s all nice. But the plant is insanely droopy and floppy, and a low yielder, so I keep planning to quit this particular one and sprout more seeds of it sometime, hoping for even better colour.
The Choc Mint is pretty to look at, dank, and a fast, easy, large yielder.
One of the two CM plants was a bit early and you can see it in this last bud pic how it’s still quite leafy. But whatever....
Mostly been busy working on my organic mix but I finally got that together a few days ago and (hopefully) cooking. I pray it will be the answer to all my grow problems.
My other main sport as usual has been wrestling with the hydroponic devils.
Thanks to the input of Daniel Fernandez, hydroponic wizard and creator of Hydro Buddy, I’ve learned a lot in the last week.
By the way, I’d really encourage anyone growing in any sort of hydro style to check out his blog, which you can easily find by searching his name and Hydro Buddy. Lots of very helpful info there contained in short (mostly) painless articles. Everything from nutrient tips, to how to make your own ph calibration solutions, to how to buffer a nutrient mix or reservoir so it will stay stable at whatever ph you choose, supposedly for months, and all sorts of other cool info.
He has confirmed my suspicions that peat moss is a pretty treacherous medium to try to grow in hydroponically. It makes me feel a lot better about the struggles I’ve been having with the deficiencies.
Peat is not all one thing to begin with. And whatever that thing is- is not inert and keeps changing. The handful of lime we use to try to control its acidity is also not inert or stable- it wears out over time, and adds unknown amounts of calcium and magnesium to the mix as it does. Of course this is all quite obvious, but I’m a very slow realizer.
I think the peat will work out better in the LOS mix, which is pretty much just like a festering compost heap already, so the peat can go ahead and break down as much as it wants in there. Though I do feel like the LOS could benefit from having some true mineral soil added in it as well someday, but what do I know? Not much....
You can see the white fuzz that’s started to grow on top. I take that as a good thing in this case.
My Atreum lights are still in the mail. I was going to set them up in the grow tent I bought for the purpose. But... I figured out yesterday that the tent is not 68” tall, as the guy I bought it from claimed. It is 84” tall!
At the time I bought it the tent was disassembled and in a box so there was no way for me to measure it.
I told him that I only had 70” to work with (the low side of my angled ceiling). He swore it was 68”. I have a feeling he was just telling me what I wanted to hear.
Ahh well can’t win ‘em all. I’ll make do some other way.For the purpose of clearing space for the Atreum lights I chopped four plants yesterday which was bit gruelling. Two Chocolate Mint and two Durple Pream.
Durple Pream has a cool sort of rainbow colour to it. Not spectacular, but nice, and a nice grapefruit smell, and is a nice crisp frosty type of bud to work with. So that’s all nice. But the plant is insanely droopy and floppy, and a low yielder, so I keep planning to quit this particular one and sprout more seeds of it sometime, hoping for even better colour.
The Choc Mint is pretty to look at, dank, and a fast, easy, large yielder.
One of the two CM plants was a bit early and you can see it in this last bud pic how it’s still quite leafy. But whatever....
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- #4,049
The sprayed plant continues to shoot its shoots towards the ceiling. These pics are from a couple days ago and it’s grown a bunch since.
At least three of the five sprayed limbs are showing signs of pods so I’ll have to find a way to separate the plant soon.
For the record I made two different new nutrient mixes- both with lower calcium and magnesium. One even lower then the other. I’m giving one mix to one side of flower and the other mix to the other side and we shall see how they do...
I’m too tired stoned and lazy to properly type that info up right now but will post it sometime, mainly for Skybound who as far as I know is the only one here measuring elemental ppm. But who knows, maybe there is someone else out there.
Hope everyone is well. If your lives are anything like mine -every silver lining has a cloud. Can’t really have one without the other. It’s either gonna be ups and downs, or just flat. As much as I’m sick of it, I’d still rather have it bumpy than flat.
At least three of the five sprayed limbs are showing signs of pods so I’ll have to find a way to separate the plant soon.
For the record I made two different new nutrient mixes- both with lower calcium and magnesium. One even lower then the other. I’m giving one mix to one side of flower and the other mix to the other side and we shall see how they do...
I’m too tired stoned and lazy to properly type that info up right now but will post it sometime, mainly for Skybound who as far as I know is the only one here measuring elemental ppm. But who knows, maybe there is someone else out there.
Hope everyone is well. If your lives are anything like mine -every silver lining has a cloud. Can’t really have one without the other. It’s either gonna be ups and downs, or just flat. As much as I’m sick of it, I’d still rather have it bumpy than flat.
Skybound
Well-Known Member
I wish Daniel joined the canna community a year ago when I was getting into peat because learning that it is the acid in the peat that breaks apart the dolomite and calcium carbonate and not the microbes, I would have added a lot less buffer for the 2nd run of my Faux Mix because not just the PH, but I was also under the impression that all of the calcium and magnesium was still locked up and not needing to be factored in when formulating my nutrients. That little nugget of knowledge changes everything and IMO makes peat a much more predictable medium to use. Sadly for me though, I didn't learn this critical detail until after I already began transitioning to a new medium and already got rid of most of my soil, so it's too late for me, but for you, you can just lower your calcium and magnesium which will allow for more K, Mn and Fe to uptake.
Edit - that GA freak you're torturing looks like she's mutating into a hemp plant. Is this an effort to produce fem pollen?
The Celt
Well-Known Member
Those really long limbs I would spiral around so they are closer to the rest of the canopy. Not sure what your air flow is like, but unless it’s down draught like mine, you may lose a lot of pollen to the fans lol
Just another note, the kitty litter, if you added it to your LOS, along with the 2 rock dusts, provide quite a bit of mineralization. I often add crusher dust to my mixes, basically powdered basalt with pieces up to 1/4”.
Just another note, the kitty litter, if you added it to your LOS, along with the 2 rock dusts, provide quite a bit of mineralization. I often add crusher dust to my mixes, basically powdered basalt with pieces up to 1/4”.
Is it just the bentonite clays you're looking for?
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- #4,053
Yeah I plan to tidy it up when I move it out of the grow room. A combination of I’ve been too busy to deal with it and I was sort of enjoying watching the beanstalk grow.
Re the mineral soil- most of my garden is peat based, naturally, and that works fine. My botanist contact keeps sending me exotic plants and he grows in what is mostly crumbled rock. Tiny pots weigh a ton and I can never figure out when to water them so I keep killing them
He always seems a little shocked that my ‘soil’ has hardly any ‘real soil’ in it. Yeah it was Celt’s idea
He made seeds with it before. While I did follow the instructions which was to spray lightly once per day for five consecutive days, I wonder if I could have gone lighter. The GA is powerful stuff. If I’d thought of it, I could have told you that. Not only did the botanist tell me that in relation to oyster shells, it’s obvious if you’ve ever been around any sort of limestone. Many of the best caves are created by water erosion of limestone. Large areas of Thailand, as well as some areas near where I live, are made of limestone. The acidic rain reacts with the lime and dissolves it. If you pour a little bit of something like vinegar on limestone you can actually hear it fizz.
The result is a very uneven erosion like a Swiss cheese effect where the rock ends up with holes through it and deep pockmarks interspersed with jagged points of rock. One spot in Thailand I lived in had a secluded bay with a beach we used to hike down to every day to swim and fish from. Nobody went there because it meant walking a mile over needle points of limestone. We’d been doing it so long and were turned into leather from the sun so we’d make the walk in bare feet daily. One time I left my pants on the rocks and when I returned and put them on there was a scorpion in them, which I found out the hard way, and involved lots of dancing around on razor edged rock and swearing.
Interesting that you think this makes peat more predictable and I suppose you’re right- as long as a person figures out how to work around the Ca,Mg influx, and constantly monitors the ph of the medium to make sure the lime is still doing it’s job.
I hope my further reduced calcium and magnesium mixes do better.
I’ll continue to heat my head against the wall with it I’m sure.
Skybound
Well-Known Member
My thinking now is that once your buffer de-acidifies the peat, will it acidify itself again? The answer to that will determine how much more added buffer would be needed to steady the PH, but also it would be good to know that little to no ca and mg would be needed in the ferts. Maybe a little bit when the soil is still fresh, but over time I would presume the ca and mg availability would increase meaning the need to add it to the ferts would be decreased. Maybe just an NPK mix with sulfur and micros and something like a biweekly shot of calmag drink to smooth things out would be better. Daniel said he'd guide you to make a formulation for your environment for one hour consulting. If you go that route, please do let me know what it is so I can update my own database.
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- #4,055
Interesting question. I’d assumed that the neutralization was temporary and a sort of ongoing balancing act, otherwise I would think the ph would settle at the same as the lime which is around 9. But I’m going to have to do more research when I get time.
It’s tempting to consider a consultation with Fernandez but aside from my low budget- my whole grow is so haywired together in so many ways that I think it might not be the greatest match.
But as a step in that direction I ordered a cheap infrared thermometer to get a better idea of the temps at my foliage level, and a better hygrometer/thermometer that will give me a graph readout over the course of the day(s). I don’t trust any of my current devices.
He’s coming from a tightly controlled hydro approach where everything is monitored and lab tested etc. I’d be embarrassed to tell him about my grow. In so many ways organics probably suits me better. Growing hydro in peat I am growing in a more ‘organic’ style- by trial and error, which is just a way of saying- totally f’d up and bass ackwards...
Speaking of which I just figured out today that one of my timers in flowering malfunctioned and has stayed on- I think for about three days now. So I just replaced that one.
It’s tempting to consider a consultation with Fernandez but aside from my low budget- my whole grow is so haywired together in so many ways that I think it might not be the greatest match.
But as a step in that direction I ordered a cheap infrared thermometer to get a better idea of the temps at my foliage level, and a better hygrometer/thermometer that will give me a graph readout over the course of the day(s). I don’t trust any of my current devices.
He’s coming from a tightly controlled hydro approach where everything is monitored and lab tested etc. I’d be embarrassed to tell him about my grow. In so many ways organics probably suits me better. Growing hydro in peat I am growing in a more ‘organic’ style- by trial and error, which is just a way of saying- totally f’d up and bass ackwards...
Speaking of which I just figured out today that one of my timers in flowering malfunctioned and has stayed on- I think for about three days now. So I just replaced that one.
Skybound
Well-Known Member
From one who spent a lot of time and money automating his grow, I found it all to be unnecessary because our plants are just too damned forgiving to be stressing about controlling atmospheric conditions in a room. I have no doubt that one can use the VPD chart to add heat or not add heat to make things more ideal, but in the long run it's not needed. IMO, the only question should be whether we can afford a good CO2 dispensing system or not.
...I've always embraced the KISS theory, so my brain sometimes hurts, when I see you guy's exploring all the science/ math to just grow a weed...no disrespect, I find some of your revelations quite interesting, just way more work than I'm willing to play with...even going back to my miracle gro' days, I've not had too many real issues growing in soil...my improved lighting since the early days, and going organic, continues to see improvement in each grow(usually)...glad to see you finally going down the LOS road Weasel...I sincerely hope it works out for you...the white fuzz, on top of your cooking mix, is indeed, a good sign...as for C02...meh, the average home grower, for personal use/family/friends, doesn't require it, imho...cheerz... 
...h00k...
...
...h00k......- Thread starter
- #4,058
I’ve been noticing the same thing with soil growers lately Dr H...
‘So here’s another update, the plants look beautiful as usual, yawn, I had to water them. I top dressed with a little bit of Himalayan tree gecko glandular secretion extract and a tea made with powdered Bolivian bark-beetle balls. Well that‘s it for this week folks’.
Ok maybe I’m bullshitting about the second part. Just the water then.
Ever try to fix some tiny thing on your car and end up with it in a thousand pieces a few days later, and then a month later you’re buying a second car for parts and a year or two later you’re taking a mechanics course and have learned a bunch of stuff but you still haven’t got the engine back together or fixed the original squeaking sound and you’re a couple years older?
One thing has led to another. I do enjoy learning new stuff. I definitely do not enjoy the deficiencies and can’t really live with them. I want to grow nice plants at least most of the time. Like the newbies do
Maybe some misguided part of me thinks I’m helping someone in the universe by solving these endless puzzles but I guess mostly I have a habit of flogging the dead horse instead of just switching to a fresh steed.
Simple DIY organic soil is really my only other viable grow option in this location , so I’m glad to be finally making some headway with that instead of butting my head against sourcing obscure expensive ingredients from afar.
Graytail first told me about VPD a few years ago and I’ve been working to ignore it ever since. Till now I guess.
When I get the infrared thermometer I will at least try and measure the canopy temps and see if tweaking my thermostat makes sense. I’ve wanted such a thermometer for several other things in the past.
‘So here’s another update, the plants look beautiful as usual, yawn, I had to water them. I top dressed with a little bit of Himalayan tree gecko glandular secretion extract and a tea made with powdered Bolivian bark-beetle balls. Well that‘s it for this week folks’.
Ok maybe I’m bullshitting about the second part. Just the water then.
Ever try to fix some tiny thing on your car and end up with it in a thousand pieces a few days later, and then a month later you’re buying a second car for parts and a year or two later you’re taking a mechanics course and have learned a bunch of stuff but you still haven’t got the engine back together or fixed the original squeaking sound and you’re a couple years older?
One thing has led to another. I do enjoy learning new stuff. I definitely do not enjoy the deficiencies and can’t really live with them. I want to grow nice plants at least most of the time. Like the newbies do
Maybe some misguided part of me thinks I’m helping someone in the universe by solving these endless puzzles but I guess mostly I have a habit of flogging the dead horse instead of just switching to a fresh steed.
Simple DIY organic soil is really my only other viable grow option in this location , so I’m glad to be finally making some headway with that instead of butting my head against sourcing obscure expensive ingredients from afar.
Graytail first told me about VPD a few years ago and I’ve been working to ignore it ever since. Till now I guess.
When I get the infrared thermometer I will at least try and measure the canopy temps and see if tweaking my thermostat makes sense. I’ve wanted such a thermometer for several other things in the past.
The Celt
Well-Known Member
Yes Copper, and cheap no name kitty litter is the cheapest way to buy it lol
Oh, if you're near one, some agriculture 'elevators' or co-ops sell it in 50lb bags even cheaper and just as the powdered clay. Also ceramic and foundry supplies sell it but those are even rarer I suspect.