7th Grow: Hempy Bucket w/auto watering

[daveroller]

Made some changes in my cabinet today:

1. Inserted an air hose into the space below the inner bucket to pump air in there. I hope that "air prunes" the roots that come out of the inner bucket, so that they don't clog the water drain hole in the outer bucket.
2. Raised up the lights.
3. Repositioned some fans.

⤋ Here's what everything looks like now. There are 6 fans blowing inside of the cabinet to try to blow the heat away from the lights and eventually up out the exhaust fan. This is an unflattering angle, because we're looking at the leaves that get pressed against the door. The other side looks much better.

You can also see that I raised up the lights. I know I could have waited a little while longer, but as long as I had the plant out of the cabinet, I thought I'd better take care of this, too. I probably won't be pulling the plant out again until harvest time. It's getting too big to move it safely.

⤋ Here's where I inserted the air hose. So far no leaks!

⤋ Here's a view of the plant from above. Looking good.

 

[daveroller]

Yesterday I was trying to train a branch that was really fighting me and all of a sudden heard a "crack". Oh crap! This is what I found:

The stem split right where I had topped the plant and spread the 2 branches apart. I wrapped the stem with a piece of velcro to try to keep it from splitting apart any more and tied a string around it to try to squeeze the 2 sides back together a little.

Hopefully, it will heal up and there won't be any serious problems. These plants heal remarkably well.

Here are a few more photos from yesterday. She's growing up towards the lights pretty fast.

You can see the little flowers forming.

Here's one close up:

 

[flowamasta]

Looking Lush
What doesn't kill her will make her stronger and for this kind of lighting, great work!.

 

[daveroller]

Looking Lush
What doesn't kill her will make her stronger and for this kind of lighting, great work!.

Thanks Flowa! She's been banged around a bit this past week. And like you said, growing ok in spite of using fluorescents. I usually get 1.5 to 2.5 ounces (45 - 75 grams) of dank bud, plus a couple ounces of sticky leaves & little buds for baking. This time the plant looks a lot healthier, though, because of the feeding system that I copied from you. Buds are multipying pretty fast now. I hope that they'll get bigger than usual with the plant being so healthy.

 

[daveroller]

Using Advanced Nutrients at almost full strength now. Changed the water & refreshed the nutes yesterday:

In 4.5 gallons of pure water:

• 68 ml Connoisseur pH Perfect Bloom A & B (each)
• 34 ml B-52
• 34 ml Big Bud
• 10 ml Sensi-Cal Bloom

(This was after flushing the roots with pure water for about 2-3 hours.)

So far today the plant isn't showing any ill effects at all from raising the nute concentration. Just the opposite -- her buds have grown a lot and more have been popping up since last time I checked. Her main branches have stretched up almost to the lights now. I hope they don't grow much taller or I'll have to do some creative training with strings.

Some photos from today:

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[daveroller]

Here's a comparison between Day 1 of flowering and Day 15 (today), to show how much the plant has grown since starting the flower phase.

Day 1:

Day 15:

Pot plants really do grow a lot after you induce flowering! I thought I was being conservative, but as you can see, the longest branches are almost touching the lights now.

 

[hbbum]

I love that before and after pic

 

[daveroller]

Looks like she finally stopped getting taller. That's good, because the upper branches are almost reaching the lights.

Here are a few pics of her flowers from yesterday.

 

[daveroller]

Last Friday I checked my cabinet and noticed a puddle of water on top of the reservoir. After inspecting everything carefully I figured that the big holes I drilled in the bottom of the inner bucket must have clogged enough from roots that it overflowed. So I changed the water pump timing from (15 minutes on / 90 minutes off) to (5 minutes on / 2 hours off). Haven't seen the problem since then. Also, the wide shelf that the buckets sit on warped enough that the buckets will tip over when I remove the front shelf. So now I need to prop it up with a stick on that side when I check inside the res. Figures this would happen on Friday the 13th.


Here are some photos from Saturday:

 

[hbbum]

Nice looking plants, and I really like your photos, great angles and framing.

 

[daveroller]

Here are some pics from today:

Changed the timing to (5 min on / 2.5 hours off).

 

[daveroller]

Day 29 and just about 5 more weeks to go. Am in the process of changing the water tonight. I'll flush the roots all night with plain tap water and feed her a fresh batch of nutes tomorrow. Took her out of the cabinet one more time so that I could do some needed work in there.

Here are some pics of her out of the cabinet:

You can see that she's not too big… but that's the way I need to grow them in the limited space that I have in the cabinet.

Here's the main thing that I needed to fix:

The main shelf that the buckets sit on got warped pretty bad from the moisture and the weight of the buckets.

So I spent a day making this new shelf:

To make it stronger, I sandwiched it between 2 pieces of sheet metal and bolted them all together. This thing ain't gonna bend! I also covered all the edges with silver waterproofing tape to protect the wood. It's heavy, but strong!

When I lifted the inner bucket out of the red one I noticed a little pile of roots hanging down in the shape of the inside of the red bucket. I haven't been successful trying to keep them from growing in there. I tried feeding an air hose into that space, to try to "air prune" the roots, but it isn't working too much. My fear is that they'll clog up the drain holes. Already, if I run the water pump for about 10-15 minutes, eventually the inner bucket overflows and the water spills out onto the shelves on top of the res. I just hope that the roots are done growing and it doesn't get any worse. Otherwise, you'll see a pissed off post about how all the res water got spilled out all over the floor. But so far, so good. Fingers crossed.

 

[Rubix]

Hey man, sweet little setup you got going on here. I just started a grow with the humpy style setup. It seems to be doing better than normal bit its only been a few days now. Btw, can I see an update on your lady?

 

[daveroller]

Nothing much new since last time. Still another month to go before harvest.

Here's a pic from today:

Not exactly donkey dongs, but I don't get big, long colas like that, not with fluorescent lighting. I'm hoping that these buds will get a lot bigger, though.

 

[daveroller]

Changed water today:

4.5 gal water
60 ml Connoisseur Bloom pH perfect A & B (each)
30 ml B-52
30 ml Big Bud

First, flushed roots for a few hours with pure water. Then:
Added nutes until ppm rose to around 900.
5.95 pH (after adjusting up from 5.4)
880 ppm

Here are some pics from tonight:

Grow baby grow! The buds are getting bigger, little by little.

 

[Rubix]

She's swelling up nicely, the tops are looking pretty fat and frosty from what I can see. Have you always used fluorescent lights for your grows? I started a thread for my grow, the link is in my signature. The 2 clones I have going right now are Dutch treat and they love the new home.

 

[Rubix]

I was wrong. Maybe it's not in my sig. Here it is https://www.rollitup.org/newbie-central/730277-hempy-style-recirculating-setup.html

 

[daveroller]

I was wrong. Maybe it's not in my sig. Here it is https://www.rollitup.org/newbie-central/730277-hempy-style-recirculating-setup.html

Your signature is working now. Your setup sounds great, but I wish you had some pictures illustrating how it's put together. I don't see any pictures in your grow journal yet.

One way that a lot of people post pictures is to first upload them on Photobucket.com (after creating a free user id there). For security, make sure that you upload the pictures to a "Private" folder in your Photobucket account. Then you refer to them in your RIU post by enclosing the address of each pic with

tags.

For example,

[img]http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/n622/daveroller/420/7th%20Grow/09-27/P1020012.jpg[/img]

(Not really HTML code... it was the only way I could display the tags & address.) Make sure you use the "direct" link from Photobucket.

I've always used fluorescent lights in my stealth cabinet because it's a very small enclosed space and I wanted to keep it quiet so that nobody visiting my house would know about it. Hotter lights require more powerful fans to cool them, which means more noise. And anyway, I don't have enough vertical space in my cabinet to keep HID lights far enough away from my plants to keep from burning them. I would like to upgrade to a CREE LED light box, like the Area-51, though. It's cooler than fluorescents, but much brighter.

I was getting about 1.5 to 2.5 ounces of potent, dried bud to smoke, plus a couple oz of sticky leaves & popcorn to make canna butter for baking cookies. That was using a simple DWC setup. This is the first grow of mine where I'm using a recirculating hempy bucket like Flowamasta's (except much smaller). So I'm hoping that I'll harvest more bud this time. (knock on wood) As you know, Flowamasta can sometimes get around 2 lb of dried bud from one of his plants. I'm just hoping for 3+ oz. That would make me happy enough.

 

[daveroller]

Only about 3 more weeks until harvest!


She's doing ok today. Didn't need to adjust pH or add water.


6.19 pH
840 ppm


Buds are gradually bulking up. Here are some pics from today:

Trichome closeup:

 

[Rubix]

Looking nice man. I can see all the little trichomes everywhere. What kind of a difference are you seeing in flowering from your last grow?