Flowering Mendel's Aether by Brother Mendel Genetics

[SweetLeafGrow]

Greetings Cultivators,

New to the site and as promised, I’m posting my grow of Mendel’s Aether by Brother Mendel Genetics. I’m super pumped about this strain and the medicinal qualities that were recommended by the breeder.

A little about my grow-

I’m in a 3x3 tent, two fans inside and one inline pulling air out of the tent to help regulate temps and RH. I’m running a single plant site RDWC with an external res outside of the tent, total water volume is about 13 gallons. I’m running the GH trio, calmag, enymes and hydroguard in a live res. I’m also running a chiller set at 68F and I have a system monitor that helps me keep track of all the vitals in the water, pH, water temp and ppm.

I am currently in week 4 since the first onset of flowers, not sure how long this strain will go.

This is my 3rd RDWC grow and it has not been an easy grow. This strain is more finicky than any that I have grown in the past. During veg, the new growth was very pale green, which led me to believe she was N deficient so I raised the ppms on her and she got a bit of leaf tip burn, backed that off and whether I was right or wrong, I decided the pale green was a genetic thing, she always greened up eventually to a normal color. She also got a bit N excess during this process. I changed out the res and reset everything when I realized this and that problem went away for the most part.

Then about a week ago, I started to see what to me looked like a calcium deficiency. I had one night where the ph dove on me right after a res change and I did not get it til morning where she had drifted down to 5.0 pH. I thought perhaps calcium had got locked out that night for a few hours and caused this issue, but it seemed to get worse after I corrected the pH so I did add about 10 ml of calmag to the res and it seems to have stopped this problem…keeping a good eye on it.

[dequilo]

Nice setup very clean your plants look fine and super nice flowers

thanks for the look at your grow and cannot wait to see how they finish

for you

all the best and welcome

Dequilo

[PreyBird1]

Nice grow. I just took down my 8 site Rcwd. Your plants are looking great! Welcome to the forum! Were excited to have you here!

[SweetLeafGrow]

Thank you!

I just built a 4 site system that I am getting ready to fire up very soon and a new light that I still need to learn how to use.

[chrisj]

Welcome @SweetLeafGrow , lovely setup and grow. Subscribed.

[SweetLeafGrow]

Hitting week 5 since onset of flower and things are going as well as can be expected. I am not seeing any more advancement of the deficiencies I was seeing previously and figure I got it taken care of last time I changed out the res and reset everything. I ran out of calmag and had some on order but it’s not here yet, I barely had enough to reset the res and actually was a bit light but seems to be enough…calmag should be here tomorrow.

Other than that, the res has been super stable, very little adjustments needed, she’s drinking about 1.5 gallons of water a day and riding at around 600 ppm, adjusting the res as needed to keep around that 600 mark where she seems to be pretty happy. Temps during the day at around 80F, RH sitting around 35%.

Flowers are starting to stack up and fill in nicely. Frost everywhere and lots even on some of the larger fans. This grow is fixin to ramp it up and the fun is just getting started!

[Moe.Red]

Hey SLG,

Glad to see you again.

When I first looked, I thought you had some bad leaf cupping going on, but looking closer those are resin rails making an optical illusion. Those are a good thing. But my curiosity is if there was a stress that induced heavy trichome production on the edges (i see some edge damage on other leaves) or if this is normal for the genetics. Do you know?

I’m also seeing a bit of praying / upturned leaves in some areas, and a little bit of downward / drooping in others. That has me scratching my head a bit. Has your VPD been solid, or are you chasing environmental setpoints perhaps?

Assuming 2*F leaf offset, your VPD is pretty high which triggers stomata to close.

On image 2265, I think I see brown shriveled pistils. Am I right? If so, and only local to that spot, start looking for nanners, that looks like it might have been pollinated.

Those fan leaves with damage are not going to get better, but we need them for a few more weeks, so getting this dialed in is for sure worth your time. Give me some feedback on what I mentioned, and if you can some closeups of the damaged leaves, especially the rust spots.

[truthhound]

I’ll just be over here… in the corner. I’ll let you know when they are finished…

[SweetLeafGrow]

First of all, so happy to see you here my bro!

So yea, I have been having issues with this gal and just trying to figure it all out. Early on in veg, I think you are familiar with my struggles trying to figure out what this strain wanted…pale green early growth lead me to believe she was N deficient when, nearest I can tell, it was merely a strain specific thing and she did green up eventually. That was my take on it, and so I increased the ppms thinking she was hungry but I do believe that was a mistake as she quickly started to show N excess, which was when I backed everything off.

At the same time, I thought I had a calcium def, which could have been related to a lock out. One night after I had changed the res, I forgot to amend the buffer before bed like I usually do and when I got up the next morning the ph had dropped to around 5.0 if I remember right…it was just a normal drop that I always see after the res change but I missed it that one night. Could that have been a cause to stress her out? Right or wrong, I did conclude that the Calcium def was not from a very brief lockout and so I did amend with a bit more calmag and it seems that problem went away. I do not know if the heavy resin rails are genetic but my guess is they would be. Not a lot of photos on the website, but she looks pretty frosty to me from the breeder.

Mendel’s Æther – Go Mendel

VPD has not been solid. ATM, it’s sitting at 1.38, having a hard time keeping the RH up enough, still very cold here and furnace running all the time. In addition to that, I am in the transition to my new room. This plant is still in the old room and I’ve had to move my humidifier to the new room. I’m going to play with the fan a bit to see if I can get that RH up more, thank you for the input. Controllers are on the budget horizon but not there yet.

My diagnostic skills are not the greatest but I am learning. I thought I was seeing P and K deficiencies as well as still seeing excess N, yesterday and I did not know exactly what to do so I fell back on your teachings and did a reset of the res…ppm’s riding around 700. She is drinking 1.5 gal a day and appears to be eating.

Fricking eagle eye there bro on the pistils. Yes, that flower has been pollinated intentionally. I’ve never done that before and I had some pollen from a real deal GDP male so I hit that one blossom with a bit of that and it seems I’m going to be a grandaddy, lol…purple even.

So yea, been struggling a bit here Moe trying to figure this out. This seems like one of those strains where you look at the breeder description and see the “difficulty level” way up there…I am only a beginner at the RDWC but she seems super finicky to me!

Thanks again brother, so appreciate your expertise and helping spirit!

[SweetLeafGrow]

Loving me some Zappa there bro!

[SweetLeafGrow]

I forgot to attach the photos…here they are.

[Moe.Red]

lol glad it was you that hit it with pollen. I hope you get something good out of those seeds. The male is really important when breeding, most would say moreso than the female, hope you had a good stud.

I am not at all worried about PH of 5 for a day or 2. If the plant cannot take that, it can actually help you troubleshoot what it needs based on the results of a lowered PH. Hydro is fast, but not deficiency in a day fast when PH is a little out.

Thanks for the link. The breeder pics look like yours. Impressive amount of trichomes there.

Based on knowing you, I’m gonna agree this girl is just a little finnicky. It happens. Let’s just watch it for now, as long as no new symptoms appear you got plenty of gas to make it to harvest and do really well. If it takes a turn, we can react at that point, but I’ll bet she settles down and flowers up nicely going forward.

What are your current ratios to get you to 600PPM, and is your RO tank clean now or still starting with 100+ PPM?

[SweetLeafGrow]

@Moe.Red

What are your current ratios to get you to 600PPM, and is your RO tank clean now or still starting with 100+ PPM?

RO tank has been refilled, starting at about 25 ppm. I used the GH week 5 ratios, 4.6 Brown, 4.6 Green, and 6.6 Pink. The 600 was a typo and I’m actually sitting around 700 atm.

[Moe.Red]

Are you running any silica products?

Lots of N in both green and brown. If you start to pare back on N as you flower, drop out green not brown. Brown has micros, sulfur, and calcium which I would not skimp on looking at your leaves. Cal-mag should be minimal at this point, and silica trending down. If this causes PH buffer issues, we can sort that out but you don’t want silica all the way to harvest.

[SweetLeafGrow]

Yes, I did get a bag of AgSil 16 and mixed up about 3/4 of a gallon of 7.8% Potassium Silicate that I am using instead of pH up for the buffer.

I did add 5 ml per gallon of calmag when I changed the res out as I did get my new supply.

So do you suggest using the pH up instead of the silica from here on out? The res is still building the buffer and I am using the silica to build that atm.

I can also add that when I initially did the res change yesterday, I landed higher than I wanted at about 1000 ppm and had to dilute with around 4 gallons to get down to that 700 mark. That is going to drop the ppms of everything including the calmag, which according to what you said I was probably a bit heavy on.

My take is keep an eye on it, if I need to do another reset, I can do that and go lighter on the green or eliminate it altogether as you have suggested.

[Moe.Red]

Silica sends PH up.
Normal operation with RDWC is a slow decline in PH.
So you gotta have something if you drop silica levels.

Late flower, silica can change the texture and structure of buds in a negative way. There is some bro science about white ash and all that, but you don’t smoke anyhow, so that’s a bit irrelevant for you.

If this were my grow at this point, I would be using potassium carbonate over potassium silicate. Luckily for you, that’s what’s in your blue bottle.

All in all, you are doing fine. These are just things to think about to lock in the brain for future adjustments.

[SweetLeafGrow]

Thank you for your honest assessment bro, eases my mind a bit. I have not seen these kind of issues before so all new territory for me.