neerGreen #2: Let's try soilless

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
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Here they are on the 23rd of January. The closeup is of a top from H1, my largest plant. The second shows the canopy. The light was changed to HPS 12/12 on the 19th.
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Two days later (the 25th) shows less changes than I'd thought when I took the pics. I am seeing incipient budding in the close-up. cn
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Soooo three days ago I check the Bud Burqa, and what assails my eyes? Leaf damage but on only one plant! Needles to say, I froke. What might have caused this!? Was it some insidious cumulative issue with my homemade flowering formula (Cola Diet™)? Was it wind burn from the oscillating fan that doesn't oscillate? Some sudden infestation or Botanical Zombie Virus?

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Then it hit me. I'd set the ozone generator into a new locale before running it at full tilt to forgive an unholy trio of aromas: the consequences of cooking and digesting Eggs Maledict ... and the act of hauling the plants out of the tent for some inspection and clearing of yellowed leaves.



In the meantime it has become no worse, but now i have some show&tell for the Plant Problems subforum.

Here's the canopy as of a few days ago, looking generally good. H1 (Thunderplant!) and Quasi are bolting like June cabbage. H2 took the ozone damage almost exclusively ... a single leaflet on H1 shows a bit of interveinal browning. And today I finally saw signs of sex on the Gimp: pistils, but only on a lower, shaded branch. Neither Gimpy plant shows even a hint of ozone damage, leaving me to wonder of there's a correlation between chloroplast density (the obvious defect in Gimply leaves) and susceptibility to chemical scorch by that most wicked of gaseous oxidants this side of fluorine and some of its compounds.

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Here are some shots taken today of the ozone-harmed leaves in natural sunlight.

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I also have a good report to give about soilless and my homemade nutes. I'm feeding at about 970ppm and a pH adjusted to 6.2.
The runoff five days ago was 930ppm and pH 5.90.
Yesterday
's feeding returned runoff of 970ppm and pH 6.00.
So I conclude that the nute strength is just right for these plants, and the balance is good enough that they can drink their pots dry without showing signs of lockout or any other malnutrition. Cola Diet™ rulz!

cn
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
happy plants dont smell much....just a tip
These have a bright green vegetal smell that fades to mildly skunky.
The other cool thing I noticed is that at lights out, they send a sharp pulse of very "green" odor into the room. I think they're exuding lights-out pheromones or perhaps defense chemicals against twilight grazers ...

... at this stage when I open the tent during the day, there is a very sweet, almost cloying honeysuckle note to their smell. cn
 

eye exaggerate

Well-Known Member
These have a bright green vegetal smell that fades to mildly skunky.
The other cool thing I noticed is that at lights out, they send a sharp pulse of very "green" odor into the room. I think they're exuding lights-out pheromones or perhaps defense chemicals against twilight grazers ...

... at this stage when I open the tent during the day, there is a very sweet, almost cloying honeysuckle note to their smell. cn
...looks great, neer! The lights out observation you made is one I've wondered about too. It's kinda like "oh, it's 7:30".
 

Kite High

Well-Known Member
Thats a comment, not a tip seeing as no advice was given. And also, are you kidding?
if the plants are not smelly much, things are good in their world...the smell is a defense mechanism mostly...so if they are a stinking then either too hot or too dry etc. and so on
 

PeyoteReligion

Well-Known Member
if the plants are not smelly much, things are good in their world...the smell is a defense mechanism mostly...so if they are a stinking then either too hot or too dry etc. and so on
Ok buddy. The smell on cannabis comes from terpenoids, which are very present in the healthiest of plants. I bet you think trichs are for helping the plant gather pollen, too, huh? Lol
 

Kite High

Well-Known Member
Ok buddy. The smell on cannabis comes from terpenoids, which are very present in the healthiest of plants. I bet you think trichs are for helping the plant gather pollen, too, huh? Lol
no they are a self defense mechanism as well...mostly against rh uv and pests ...the trichomes catching pollen would in no way help for fertilization as it is the pistils which must attach the pollen...please find someone else to try to ridicule as I am not a newb or dumb nor am I your toy

and yes terpenes are present in healthy plants...but are NOT being dispersed into the air to the same degree as stressed plants...you should study botany a bit before attempting, and lamely so, to be comical
 

PeyoteReligion

Well-Known Member
no they are a self defense mechanism as well...mostly against rh uv and pests ...the trichomes catching pollen would in no way help for fertilization as it is the pistils which must attach the pollen...please find someone else to try to ridicule as I am not a newb or dumb nor am I your toy

and yes terpenes are present in healthy plants...but are NOT being dispersed into the air to the same degree as stressed plants...you should study botany a bit before attempting, and lamely so, to be comical
Oh mister sensative are we? I'm not here to argue with you. CN the plants are kicking ass, keep it up.
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Long time no post, folks.

I did get some clones of three plants to root. But then i did something bad.
I had some leftover FF Happy Frog from last year, bone-dry in a bucket. I knew something was wrong when i rehydrated it and it turned into black soup, but ~shrug~ dirt, right?
I planted the rooted clones into this anyway, and after 2 weeks the leaves were dying, curling, going crispy. It could be bad pH or wildly decayed nutrients. A week ago i rescued the clones into ProMix and have been watering with veg formula adjusted to 350-400ppm. They're doing better now, with healthy green growth. They're relaxing under my 96w T5 panel, and I am thinking of switching this out for the 2x26w CFL fixture once it gets warm. The solitary plant is a Buddha Tahoe #18 seedling. Of four seeds, three sprouted but the other two stopped growing and died while very young. This one, the survivor, actually had to be tweezed free of its shell ... the taproot was curling around&around and not finding its way out of the husk inside the shell.

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So i have 2 clones from three of my four plants: H1 the Tall Healthy and my biggest plant, H2 "Bushy Gal", and Quasi, the less gimpy of my two Gimps. Here's a Q clone showing her mother's unwinning characteristics. I may or may not play with her to find if there are better conditions to control the Gimpiness.
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Here's a shot of the tent. H1 dominates the front right. Q is the tall but narrower plant behind her. Rear left is H2, my Bushy gal, and the Gimp soldiers on in the front left corner.

The plants have also begun dropping fan leaves at an accelerated rate. My flowering formula is mixed to this spec (element, ppm):

N 75
P 110
K 134
Ca 200
Mg 45
S 146

It mixes up to an indicated TDS of 1000ppm on my Nutra Dip probe. I dilute it with tap water (50ppm!) into about ~500ppm when feeding my plants. So I've been wondering if maybe the pplants need more N. So I mixed a big pot of feed to 440 ppm and added three grams ammonium nitrate for a 35ppm N increase. TDS went up to 530, and I fed with that four days ago. The plants like it (no trace of overfert) but are still dropping leaves. So today I watered with a dose of flower nutes cut to 430 and enriched with 50ppm N from ammonium nitrate.

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Here is three days' leaf "harvest". i only pull leaves that come off easily or are already all curled and dried. The stripers are from the ozone damage episode a while back.

Conclusion: Happy Frog isn't soil. It's a "potting medium" that i think is great when fresh ... but does not survive dry storage. It should have a Best By date. cn

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cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Last year at this time, my grow thread was lively. This year it is not. So I'll go Billy Idol and dance with myself.

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Here are six clones (recovering nicely from the happy Frog unhappiness) and a seedling that i had the good luck to plant in ProMix right away. i topped the Buddha Tahoe seedling after the photo.
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A canopy shot into the Bud Burqa™. Laverne is H1, the leggy gal dominating the front right. The smaller tall one behind her is Q, the Quasigimp. Shirley (H2) is the low but wide one in the back left.
I initiated 12/12 on January 19th. So at this point they're 55 days in, almost 8 weeks. I figure they have about a month of fruitful fruiting to go.
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Here's the Buddha Tahoe after topping and in sunlight. Happy healthy plant that I want to turn into a mother for clones.

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Here are the two clones from Q. One looks really good with no trace of the gimpiness. The other took the Unhappy Frog sort of personal and still hasn't forgiven me.

About nutrient. Last watering contained 5 grams of ammonium nitrate, almost doubling [N]. I did not manage to slow the dropping and yellowing of leaves ... and managed to induce some clawing on lower branches. Now I gave them a shot of magnesium (5 grams into 26 liters for an approximate 20ppm boost). if that shows obvious results, I'll reformulate Cola Diet™ with more magnesium. If not, I'll go with unadorned Coal Diet for the rest of the grow. I'm diluting it to about 500 ppm for application, and on the last watering i got back 680 ppm in the waste ... which is good enough. cn
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
I repotted the Buddha Tahoe today.

Earlier i refered to it as a Buddha Tahoe #18. I'm hung up on that. It's actually a Buddha Tahoe OG (Cali Connection, feminized) and in my mind it's mixing with OG #18 for some mysterious reason. My head-cheese, it's gone blue ...

So here is the gal being repotted. What a nice root mass for a month-old plant. I teased it out of the square pint pot and replanted into a six-inch azalea pot (nominal capacity 81 cubic inches or 1 1/3 quarts). I used ProMix and watered it in thoroughly. After the watering-in, I added a liter of veg nute adjusted to 500ppm.
I gathered the effluent (eluate?) in five portions and measured a TDS of 130, 260, 380, 450 and 470ppm. I felt pretty smug about the match of volume to application.
Back under the T5s with the Headless Buddha. cn

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cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Here are a few pics of the Widow grow. The first three were taken on day 60 of 12/12. I figure closer to day 50 of actual flower, since the transition seemed to take that long. Pic 1 is of the tent minus Laverne, the big girl. Shirley is flanked by her shorter cousins the Gimp and Quasi.

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Here's a detail of Laverne. They look close to done by my eyes. However the 20x shows mostly clear trichomes, a few cloudy, and the odd amber (really more brown in the center).
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Here's a tent shot with Laverne back inside. She rather dominates the light footprint. The two bigger plants have been shedding their fans at a fairly steady rate. I've learned to pull them for inspection and cleanup before I water them ... lifting them dry is much much better for my poor back.
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Here's Shirley (the shorter of the two big girls) in daylight. Her top fans are yellowing, but the buds and sugar leaves look properly green.
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cn
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
the Chop is upon us!
The first pic is Laverne last Tuesday, when I reduced most of her to somewhat groomed weed.
I have decided that this entire crop is being bubbled. I love bubble as a smoke, and it makes for easier long-term storage.
As a result, i've streamlined my trimming procedure to remove the deadweight 9fan leaves, trichome-free leaf tips) while retaining almost all the good trichome-bearing material.

Here's Laverne before meeting the Pruning-shears of Ultimate Truth.
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Here she is half-bobbed.
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A representative stem before and after the quickie trim.
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I have commandeered my excess of wire coathangers as drying accessories.

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Last night her cousin Shirley came down.
I think she has a bad case of teh zorch ... not from any of the usual causes. I think ozone is the culprit! I had family over this wknd, and ran the ozonizer more than once to soothe my paranoia. I am finding that weed is pretty sensitive to ozone in the air, and the effects are just delayed long enough that I didn't twig until now. I'm avoiding the ozonizer until i can get them all cut, and have been using the current spell of decent weather to disappear unseemly aromas into the great outdoors.
Here's Shirley on the [figurative] stone altar
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and again after the chop.
I have ten coathangers full of inverted branches slowly drying in a quiet corner. in a few days I'll break them down to nugs and continue curing them. I am doing a proper cure despite my intent to bubble: Laverne has blown off her hay smell and is smelling like proper weed. Imo this validates the biggest curiosity issues I had:
my salt fert recipe seems sound,
and soilless rocks!
I *have* found that, late in the grow, the root mass and medium began to pull away from the pot's sides. This made channeling (rapid runthrough of nute with poor absorption by the medium) noticeable. The next time, I'll try the "Advanced" medium from Sunshine. It uses coir and not sphagnum, and I expect it to be less shrinkage-prone.
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cn
 
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