UPDATE 6/14: Treycer11 first grow

[treycer11]

So I had to scratch the first seedlings because they just weren’t changing and reacting well to anything I was doing. Started a new grow two weeks ago today and this time I used 2” x 2” rock wool cubes to start in. They were soaked in pH water @6.0. Seeds germinated great and as soon as we noticed the cotyledons we put them under a T5 light as close as we could get it without touching the dome. They were also under a dome and had a heating pad on them. Checked them every day and if the cubes were dry we would mist the cubes and the dome. The first picture I’m attaching is from day 10.

Wasn’t happy with the rate of growth in the next couple days so I moved the tray into our 5x5 grow tent. They are under the Growers Choice ROI-e680 light at 60% and around 24” below. We have the circulating fan running and negative pressure in the tent. I’ve also got a 6” circulating fan about 2 ft away blowing in the seedlings. Temperature in the tent read 81 degrees and humidity read 42 so I sat a pitcher of water inside to hopefully evaporate and bring the humidity up. Second and third pictures are when then went into the 5x5.

Here’s why I’m posting this. They started to yellow so I did some thinking and re-read/watched some things here and there and came up with a three day feeding schedule rotation. Day 1: Advanced Nutrients Connoisseur Bloom Coco A & B and sensi cal mag. Day 2: Voodoo Juice and H&G Root Excelurator. Day 3: B-52 and Sensizym. All of these at 1/4 strength. The yellowing has to be because they were deficient because we were just giving them distilled pH water around 6.0…so it could not be nutrient burn.

My partner sends me the last two photos today. So I’m baffled. Start thinking of why they are still on the down turn and the only thing I thought to change was to make sure that the large opening in the bottom of the tent is open so that they are getting enough fresh air. Other than that Idk what we’re doing wrong. And the other problem is the grow space isn’t at my house so I don’t see them everyday. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or he’s not listening and doing what I ask. I’ve ran into this stunted growth problem twice now. Starting to wonder if it’s an environment issue. Is the light too strong? Is it too hot? Not enough humidity? Should I rest the seedlings and move to a 20/4 or 18/6? Something wrong with fresh air circulation set up?

[covertgrower]

Look hungry to me. More nitrogen. Needs a transplant into whatever medium your intend to use.

[chrisj]

As @covertgrower suggested. I would put them in their new growing mediums to give them a buffer of sort. You are right they are not looking happy. They are also stretching a way too much, so dropping the light might be an option. Keep us posted, happy to help.

[treycer11]

@covertgrower @chrisj

Update:

So like I said, the plants were given NPK and some cal-mag Sunday evening and yesterday they were given Voodoo Juice and H & G Roots Excelurator Gold. Everything at 1/4 strength. They are looking better as far as color but they are still wilted. This should improve with the feeding schedule right? I’ve also cranked the light up to 100% strength and will walk it in closer from here. Thanks for all the info and suggestions! Hopefully we’ve got it worked out!

[covertgrower]

@treycer11

100% strength

I probably wouldn’t turn it up right now until you see some greener leaves. The last thing you need are plants that are hungry, and trying to feed even more with more light.
If you have something to dome them with it will prevent them from getting so wilted. The medium that you have them doesn’t appear wet at all. Is that coco? Definitely needs more water no matter the medium.
Are there holes in the bottom of your cups?

[treycer11]

Ok I’ll turn it down a little. I do have a dome that I can put on it. And yes it’s coco. Cyco pearl with added perlite. I will add more water as well. How often would you feed them NPK and how much? I’ve seen everything from shot glass full to having run off during this stage with the stuff I’ve watched on YouTube. And yes, there are holes in the bottom of the cups.

[covertgrower]

I suspect if you water/feed until you have a little run off, (about 5%?) and then didn’t water/feed for a few days and allow it to dry for a bit you should be fine.
About 200-500 PPM nutrient solution should be good. See how they respond then go from there.
PH for coco is 5.8-6.0.

[chefjonnyg]

Try root riot instead

[empyreal.craig]

If you’re looking for better results with your seedlings my first suggestion would be to use absolutely no hood whatsoever. If your room is 20% humidity or 80% humidity they will work better without a hood. The seedlings when they pop out are sensitive to light more than humidity. They seem to adjust to whatever environment they start out in. You will get better stronger seedlings with less base rot and toppling.

When you’re placing the seed in the rockwool split the cube in half and find a little channel to start the seed in with the non-scarred end pointing down. Put the two halves back together and place right into the 6 inch block. I have seen tap roots coming out of the bottom of a 6 inch rockwool block before the seed ever popped out of the surface. Doing this allows the Taproot to immediately perceive a much deeper environment rather than curling around inside the tiny a okay cube and you will never have a chance for transplant stress because there’s no transplanting.
I’ve had success with this using 1200 PPM water to soak the block and then water seedling afterwards… Yeah I know that’s sacrilege but it worked. I’ve sprouted them under induction bulbs, t5, t8, metal halides and sodium’s all at reasonable distances away and the seeds have done great if they didn’t have a hood.
Remember, God (nature for the God skeptics) doesn’t use a hood and those seeds have had to pop up in jungles and deserts all the same but I have yet to see a Hood out there in nature. By using the hood my opinion is that you are giving them this wonderful humid environment that doesn’t exist anywhere they’ve been naturally selected. The lack of circulation alone in a hood with all that humidity and then you take the hood off and tell an infant to deal with the change.
Enclosing this post I would encourage you not to believe a thing I’ve said but perhaps be intrigued enough to test it for yourself and see it first-hand. I offer this is free advice from the trenches. the best advice I could give you in regards to this is to test it and see it with your own eyes and feel the great feeling when you do something that works better then you were doing before. Regardless of the results you’ve just become a better grower because you pursued knowledge. If you do test this I would really love to hear what your results were.
Cheers

[empyreal.craig]

I also meant to suggest creating a small hole in a 6 inch rockwool cube and placing the seed directly into the big cube rather than using the a okay. It works great if you don’t use a hood.
The only reason for the starter cube is if you’re going to use a hood with clones on seedlings I think it’s an unnecessary.

In the pic I attached you can see an example of what I’m talking about. This is not really part of her grow but more my curiosity corner. All those seeds went straight into the block and the one in the back if you can see it I just stuck down into the hole and I’m thinking it may be really stable as the stock fills in that space. if you learn anything shoot me a note I’d love to hear it.
Cheers

[treycer11]

UPDATE:

So it’s been a while since my last post in here. I promised myself I would keep this grow logged on here if it ended up working out. I will say the first 3-4 weeks of this go around was rough. I was so happy that our seedlings kept growing this time, instead of the stunted ones we had before,…that I let some other things get away from me. I had just transplanted these into solo cups in the last photos on here. They stayed in there for 2-2.5 weeks afterwards and kept improving…but still the rate of growth was terrible. And then I started noticing that little by little to “high” temp kept getting higher and higher. The temperature at one point was 99 degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity was still 40% and we were on a 24hr light cycle at 80% with the 680w growers choice ROI e680 LED light. Then I read an article in Maximum Yield magazine about the pros and cons of a 24 hr light cycle on plants and how most people that do it are doing it wrong…

So after doing some research on here and youtube, I made some improvements to our environment. First, I switched the light schedule to a 6/2 x3 (6 hours on 2 hours off three times in a 24 hr period). This helped with the heat since before it was constantly on therefore constantly adding heat. Now it has a chance to rest three times a day, which could help maximize the total light the plants can take in a day (which has its own name but I forgot what it is already lol). Then we changed our filter and fan setup from outside the tent to inside, “silenced” it a little more, exhausted to the attic instead of just the room the tent is in, and taped an flexible duct adapter from the home’s ac vent straight into the tent. After a few days, the temps came down to a 76high/67low temperature range and has since been holding pretty steadily there. That was two weeks ago. The plants were probably in the solo cups for too long as they were a little root bound when we pulled them and transplanted into the AutopotXL pots (6.6 gal pots I believe). After transplanting the res was fully implemented and now I think our plants are on the right track! I’m going to try and veg for another 2 weeks or so to maximize yield a little further and then we can FINALLY switch to flower! I will update right before we switch. Thanks again for all the help and feedback!!!

[chrisj]

Hey glad their has been improvement and growing indoors is a never ending learning curve. Glad they have bounced back. They are looking a little overwater and saggy.

You did some great research on reducing your heat issues. Its called the 12-1 lighting method. A couple growers on here have used it with some great results, while reducing heat and electrical bill.

Looking forward to seeing your updates and keep them coming.

[empyreal.craig]

Here’s some free advise (worth what you pay)… Up front this is my best shot based on your post. I have seen heat make plants look over-watered and with your post I’m thinking that might be it.
Cannabis can take all the light and heat thrown at them if you can keep them watered. A clean coco/pearlite at 50/50-ish drains fast enough to avoid over-watering issues but the frequency is the killer even on automated systems because the heat tends to move in a range. If that is promix or a peat based product over-watering becomes an issue. Peat clogs hydro…even soft-porn hydro like coco/pearlite.

The damage you circle in the 3rd pic looks like old and solved problems. The top growth is coming around and I always pull that bottom stuff off. I think it takes more than it gives and in a few days it will be in the shade. The plant is moving on and with cut if off when the light is gone but bugs can harbor, airflow can be affected, etc. … Looks like an ugly ballet dress. Those top 3 nodes look good and even a little hungry (hard to tell really but the top leaves are the same shade as the bottoms so I’m guessing they are a little light green vs deeper green).

It will be interesting to see how they pop for you at 76 vs 90’s…
cheers
Quindarious

[empyreal.craig]

I would be interested to hear how the autopot system works for you. I have grown a 13 foot GDP plant in a room with 9 foot ceilings in a 5 gallon plastic bag with holes in it. It was bottom-fed by filling the tray and flushed once a week or so from the top. Currently we grow drain-to-waste but in the past I’ve even grown 10-12 plants on my deck with miracle grow and a watering mat. I was told for years that salts would build up etc. here’s another product that made it to market in the face of all that “wisdom”. If you have any insights I’m all ears. Thanks for the cool post.
Quindarious

[treycer11]

I have them in a 50/50 mix of CYCO Pearl w/mychorizae (sp) and perlite. I have been reading a lot lately on super soils and amending coco coirs. I may end up doing that next go around. The autopot so far is awesome! The valve design is pretty cool.

This week I will be researching more about defoliation and some training methods that might help. My scares about defoliation are how do I determine what is ok to take off and what isn’t. I think the plants are big enough to handle a little more stress but I don’t want to over do it either. How do I know I’ve defoliated enough? I increased nutes today as well. Using Advanced Nutrients full lineup. I went up to ~80% of the suggested amounts AN’s website suggests and my ppms were around 1000 after mixing everything up. pH was 5.9. Do you think 1000ppm’s is too little or too much at this stage?

Thanks for the reply. defiintely have given me things to think about!

[empyreal.craig]

Regarding the defoliating… I have looked into this extensively. The best results we got were getting the plants through veg and then pulling EVERY fan with a stem that could be snapped off. This left 2-3 small leaves on the end of every developed branch. Then those plants were observed for how well they bounced back. If the root are solid in 3-5 days the plant will look full again and it’s ready to flip. Then I don’t touch it until bud-set is done (2-3 weeks). Then did a last defoliation of undergrowth and a little for light penetration.

I don’t know about PPM’s in a bottom-fed system. Plants take up 10 parts water per 1 part nutes (roughly speaking) so transpiration can shoot your root zone ppm’s up and build salts up. This is why a 30-50% (IMO 10% doesn’t do it) runoff works so well. You are replacing the root zone environment every watering. Can’t do that in soil or peat but plants rage in hydro with this watering practice.

To determine the right ppm’s and watering interval I suggest the following for top fed systems. i don’t see a way to do the following unless you top-water 1x/week to see where you’re at…in fact, this would be interesting to determine if salts are building up with the bottom watering system.
first, how do your plants look? The right questions is for this plant what’s the best ppm. I had a plant that grew better at 400-600 ppm than 900-1200ppm.

Next, make some 1000 ppm water and pour it through until the runoff is 1000 to 1100 ppm. With 50/50 coco and a health plant you will not over water. This is key… if your runoff is the same as your water going in you have “flushed” the root zone and build up won’t happen. coco will harbor some salts so here’s a way to monitor and avoid big fluctuations…
Test the first water that comes out the bottom. Ideally if it is up to 1100 this is the perfect time to top-water again. (We are assuming here 1000ppm is ideal for your plant). if it is higher than the 1100 ppm goal water sooner. If it is lower than 1000 ppm wait… the plant will concentrate the nutrients as it takes them up because 10 parts water are required to move 1 part nutrients ergo as the pot dries the ppm increases.

I would also suggest taking samples after the first one as the water pours out the pot (again, top-watering/weekly flushing). PPM will be higher at the start and gradually move down to your target. The goal is to water at the top of the acceptable/determined range. Do this and the tops of your plants will look like bamboo with veins. The plant will be building infrastructure to match it’s genetic potential.

For a little reference I did some consulting (mostly free for cancer patients but some paid) in well over 70 grows. Every one with lock-up issues fixed the problem by changing their watering practiced vs nutrient lines or other factors. Solve this and bugs, molds, etc can’t thrive. The plants look great. Roots are white and juicy vs brown or brown with white tips. Everything gets better when the root zone is healthy.

If you would really like to plug into a guy who will get on the phone, listen and diagnose your situation, and make solid recommendations I would refer you to Gorgon at American Agriculture in Portland OR. They are a grow shop that’s been there for 25yrs or so and the guy knows his shit to say the least. they sell everything but he built the Flying Skull nutrient line. Tell him Craig referred you if you call him… He also invented Nuke Em’. he’s a hook up for sure. He has a watering guide he published but last I heard he still only gave that to people trying his nutrients. That little pamphlet is gold though… I always told people buy a set of nutes, get the booklet and test it out. They are dry nutrients so shipping is easy. Re-reading that I want to point out I am not on commission from Gordon… just passing on the hookup because you sound like you really want to figure this out… Gordon is a 30 year guy who will talk to you without a consulting fee.

I stopped looking a pH because the good nutes are at the right pH when mixed and i have not been able to verify claims about runoff pH. Only way to really tell is the 50/50 water/soil mixed and tested but different areas of the root zone can have different pH’s (we tested this) so I stopped worrying about it.

That’s my shot at an answer from the hip. i am glad to clarify any of it. It reads good to me but that doesn’t mean it makes sense. And again, this method would only have value if you’re flushing once a week to monitor and remove any salts that might build up.

Cheers,
Q

[treycer11]

Hello all, here is an update for this past week on this grow…

…decent amount of growth I think for a week. I think I went a little high on the nutes because both ppms and pH climbed a little bit towards the end of the week. The little autoflower that we have is looking a lot better and healthier, relatively speaking that is.

Today I changed out the res. I’m using Advanced Nutrients full lineup. I could probably be a little more patient and keep them vegging for a little longer but this is week 7 and I want to go into flower dag nabbit! lol So this is the last week they’ll be vegging. To prep for flower, I switched to Connoisseur Bloom A & B at around 75% strength, bud candy, rhino skin, bud ignitor, and sensizym all around 60-65% strength. I’ve been giving them the AN root lineup for a while plus using H&G roots excelurator for a while so I decided to give them a break from that this week. I also defoliated and tried opening them up a little, which was my first time doing any of that type of stuff. I think next time around I’ll keep the light a little weaker for a little longer. The plants are super bushy and stout…absolutely stacked. I could barely get my hands inside to get some of the small fans on the bottom. I’m thinking if the light is a tad weaker the nodes might get a little more air between them. I attempted “supercropping” one little branch and ended up splitting it. wrapped it in tape so hopefully it comes out ok. Also tried to LST a couple branches on one plant but didn’t feel very confident with that either. drilled some holes into the rim of the XL pots but the branches weren’t quite long enough I don’t think because the string kept slipping over the bud sites.

This week I’ll be doing some heavy research on defoliation, different training techniques, environment for flower, and more about what @empyreal.craig was telling me last week about checking the run offs.

Thanks for all the help so far and keep the tips coming!

[treycer11]

Forgot to mention we had some slight pH issues yesterday and the day before. That coupled with the stress of today is why they seem so “sad.” Now that I’m looking at these photos, they’re not the best representation of how they look in person.

[treycer11]

These pics are from Monday, two days after some defoliation and res changeout. It was the first time I attempted any of that stuff so I was nervous about their stress. They had also been dealing with higher pH water for probably a day or so. But I think they handled everything fine.

Switching to flower today! Very excited. I will upload more pics later today.

[treycer11]

They flip to flower tonight. Last photos in veg. Oh and the strawberry cheesecake auto seems to be doing A LOT better all of the sudden. Two more weeks left for that one according to breeder. Will an auto’s buds fatten up that quick in two weeks? Or will this definitely be a below average yield?

Any big tips to look/watch out for/pay attention to during the turn and early flower periods?