120W LED + Rainforest 66 + Papaya

[206]

Today I ordered a bunch of new supplies:

55w tri-band LED panel (third band is orange on this one though, compared to full spectrum on my 120w).

Electrode cleaning & storage solutions, ph 7.01 calibration solution, and replacement batteries for ph/ec/tds meter.

Cheap and small hydro system with 6 3.75" sites and 4 gallon res. Came with a 6" air stone which I am upgrading to 12". Also got two extra 12" air stones and will add one to the rainforest (giving it 2) and keep one for backup.

My plan is to move both bag seed plants and papaya #2 into the new hydro system under the new 55w light. I will also move my humidity dome with the four cuttings from papaya #1 under the new light. As soon as thats done I will begin flowering papaya #1 and thai s-skunk in the rainforest.

If papaya #1 turns out to be male I will transplant the thai s-skunk to a waterfarm and start a new grow in the rainforest with feminized autoflowering seeds. I'm still hoping its a female but it won't be the end of the world if its not, because this grow has given me valuable LED + Hydro experience.

 

[jollygreenleaf]

206,
what about penetration? I have heard one of the problems with LED's is light penetration below the top canopy. Could this be why you have one large palnt and many other smaller ones? It seems, so far, that if you had 1 or 2 plants this light would be great because you could put it so close to the canopy. Maybe it doesn't have the dispersion power of HID. Stoned-just wonderin.
I wish you had started this earlier. Im about ready to buy a light.

 

[206]

206,
what about penetration? I have heard one of the problems with LED's is light penetration below the top canopy. Could this be why you have one large palnt and many other smaller ones? It seems, so far, that if you had 1 or 2 plants this light would be great because you could put it so close to the canopy. Maybe it doesn't have the dispersion power of HID. Stoned-just wonderin.
I wish you had started this earlier. Im about ready to buy a light.

It has only been in the last few days (since the canopy grew in completely) that I have started to pay close attention to penetration. So far so good I guess... there has been a lot of lower growth and filling in, especially around the empty area I took cuttings from. Check back in a few days for an update on this. I also have some velcro plant ties on the way since the horizontal branching is getting out of control.

In regards to the other plants being smaller it is simply because they are 2-3 weeks younger. If you check the earlier pages you will see the big plant did not start the explosive growth until its roots hit the water, which the smaller ones did just a few days ago.

This afternoon I emptied and refilled the res and fed flora series to 525ppm (from 25ppm tap water). The root system of papaya #1 is so big I can't pull the net pot up and out anymore, I need to also remove its individual tray.

New plan is to begin flowering on 4/20! Hopefully the weed gods will reward me with a girl for being so thoughtful.

Peace. All comments and questions welcome.

 

[ElephantRider]

Looks amazing, man. Tell me you're cloning. Also.. you did this with nothing but 120W LED?? Not for nothin', but they look gigantic.

 

[206]

Looks amazing, man. Tell me you're cloning. Also.. you did this with nothing but 120W LED?? Not for nothin', but they look gigantic.

Thanks and yes they have been under 120w LED only from seed and will be until harvest

I have taken 4 clones over the last few days (first time ever cloning) and hope to see roots shortly. Three of the four look like they are still on the mother with no wilting at all but one is a little droopy. I want to take a couple more but am scared of stressing the plant before I begin flowering on Monday, what do you guys think?

 

[ElephantRider]

I have taken 4 clones over the last few days (first time ever cloning) and hope to see roots shortly. Three of the four look like they are still on the mother with no wilting at all but one is a little droopy. I want to take a couple more but am scared of stressing the plant before I begin flowering on Monday, what do you guys think?

I just took my first clone ever last night and it's droopy as sin. Of course, I used my top node as my clone, so the leaves are gigantic. Thinking of clipping the leaves down, as I've seen some others do. Did you do that?

 

[s.mills]

Hey 206 the plants are looking good. I am using a 90w UFO and she veged like crazy! Now i can't wait to see how it goes during flowering. Good luck with yours and take a look at mine.

 

[s.mills]

Hey 206 the plants are looking good. I am using a 90w UFO and she veged like crazy! Now i can't wait to see how it goes during flowering. Good luck with yours and take a look at mine.




https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/180361-blueberry-led.html

 

[206]

I just took my first clone ever last night and it's droopy as sin. Of course, I used my top node as my clone, so the leaves are gigantic. Thinking of clipping the leaves down, as I've seen some others do. Did you do that?

Mine were pretty small and off from the sides but I did trim the leaves of one of them. Good luck with yours as well.

Hey 206 the plants are looking good. I am using a 90w UFO and she veged like crazy! Now i can't wait to see how it goes during flowering. Good luck with yours and take a look at mine.

Thanks. I plan on picking up a UFO in the next month so I will definitely check out your journal.

More pics tomorrow. Peace.

 

[206]

I just wanted to share some updated pics. This is after taking four more cuttings (8 total now) which took away a lot of the bushiness around the edges.

 

[206]

Tonight I added 4x26w 6500kCFLs to a power strip mounted on a small storage rack. This clone rack will house my new cheapo hydro system, which itself is housing 4 cuttings from papaya #1 and 2 small bag seed seedlings that I transplanted out of the RF66. Tomorrow I'm going to add mylar panels that mount to the sides of the clone rack.

I also used about a dozen velcro plant ties on papaya #1 and brought the outside branches up and in towards the center stalk quite a bit. This will give the super skunk and papaya #2 more direct exposure to the light as they were beginning to get seriously shaded in.

Its only about 48 hours now until I flip the tent LED to 12/12 and I'm getting pretty excited. My new plan is to add the 55w tri-band panel to the main tent during flowering. I will pull it out in a couple weeks and grow the new clones from my clone rack. I plan on getting a 90w UFO in the next month and hope to have three perpetual harvests going in 55w, 90w, and 120w chambers + the cfl clone rack.

Anyways here are the pics. Peace!

Edit: The last two pics are right before using the plant ties and right after using them.

 

[206]

Pic 1: Papaya #1 day 36 from seed
Pic 2: Papaya #1 roots day 36 from seed. Root ball is the size of a basketball.
Pic 3: Clone rack with mylar now applied

ppm is still at a relatively low 625 at the conclusion of veg. I begin flowering in 24 hours.

Any comments or suggestions welcome!

 

[206]

Calling all experienced growers I would appreciate your help here. I think my plant is already showing its sex prior to flower? Below is a high res pic of what I believe to be female flowers on papaya #1:



I'm using this picture for reference (specifically the bottom right): http://www.weedfarmer.com/g2.2/main.php/male-female/MALE_FEMALE.jpg.html

Please help me be sure of the sex as this is only my second grow! Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[1982grower]

hey man. dont be fooled by preflowers. they commonly look like that and turn out to be female. anyone claiming to know 100% is lying. if ou had grown the strain many times and noticed patterns then maybe. but i would never judge a sex by preflowers. i recently learned my lesson after taking about 50 clones from what thought was a female based on the exact same thing you are looking at. after finding out it was a male i was pretty pissed. even though there really isnt any way of knowing the best way to guess is to look for stretching. usually the males by that age will have stretched alot more than the others. but even thats still guessing. the reason i cloned mine is because i saw what you saw and figured i could save 3 weeks by not flowering and then reveging the mother. i figured it looked female so i'll clone it. i read every preflower post on the net. my point is dont trust it!!!. but hope it is. good luck. and if you want just throw a paper bag over a small branch for 12 hours and dont flower the whole plant.

 

[1982grower]

sorry it was supposed to say that they commonly look like that and can be male. sorry man. lol

 

[repvip]

206

Can you take another pic? It's kind of hard to tell on that one, but I'm leaning towards female. It's perfectly normal for the plant to show its sex in veg mode, but it typically takes about 6 weeks from seed (or the 8ish node if you didn't top)...

Have you considered bumping up your ppm now? Also curious what the ppm is of the water you are using (tap or reverse osmosis)?

 

[206]

Thanks guys, I shared some more pics via PM and am 99% sure it is female now. Here is an updated post about it elsewhere: https://www.rollitup.org/2397940-post21.html

About a half hour ago the lights went dark for the first time and 12/12 began. Just a few minutes before I removed papaya #2 from the system as it was stunted and had several deformed branches and leaves. So this leaves only the papaya monster and super skunk.

206 Have you considered bumping up your ppm now? Also curious what the ppm is of the water you are using (tap or reverse osmosis)?

I'm very lucky to have 25ppm tap water here. I was at 625ppm at the end of veg and tonight I added bloom nutes just before switching to 12/12 and raised to 750ppm. I know the papaya can take more but I'm being cautious because of the smaller super skunk. I'll ramp up the feeding schedule if they respond well this week though.

If you enlarge and zoom in on these pictures you can see all kinds of high resolution papaya goodies

 

[Actingbusy]

Impressive grow... I am a Rainforest User myself but was forced to place my ladies into DWC buckets due to over crowding in the Rainforest so I ended up ordering the 236 Lid Kit for the Rainforest and use it exclusively for rooting my clones and seedlings. Also had a Papaya as my first grow in it and it did show sex before I ever switched it to 12/12 which caught me by surprise. I wasnt expecting it but good thing I did because one ended up being a male and I wasnt aware but I pulled him out before his sacks spilled pollen on the lady. Good luck with the LED's

 

[206]

Impressive grow... I am a Rainforest User myself but was forced to place my ladies into DWC buckets due to over crowding in the Rainforest so I ended up ordering the 236 Lid Kit for the Rainforest and use it exclusively for rooting my clones and seedlings. Also had a Papaya as my first grow in it and it did show sex before I ever switched it to 12/12 which caught me by surprise. I wasnt expecting it but good thing I did because one ended up being a male and I wasnt aware but I pulled him out before his sacks spilled pollen on the lady. Good luck with the LED's

Thats awesome, its pretty cool to talk with someone who grew the same strain in the same system. How do you like the 36 2" pots? Have you filled it to capacity? Also what has your success rate been so far? I might be interested in doing this in the future.

Anyways here are a couple pics from day 1 of flowering. Peace and hope you had a great 4/20!

Pic 1: Thai Super-Skunk
Pic 2: Papaya
Pic 3: Papaya main stem flower

 

[206]

Below are pics of my new 55w tri-band LED. I'm very impressed with the brightness and overall quality of this unit so far, especially since I paid less than $100 for it. For at least the next 2-3 weeks it will be in the tent next to my 120w.

Pic 1: 120w only
Pic 2: 120w + 55w
Pic 3: 55w laid out on top of my tent for closeup.
Pic 4: 55w illuminating ceiling to demonstrate light output.

All comments and questions are welcome. Hope you had a great 4/20!