2nd time around as a grower, this time with way more money, skills, and equipment...

April 21st - no maintenance today, reservoir levels still good, they were a bit high on last maintenance because I had to top off to bring PPM to correct range. The 7 day old clones started rooting! They started showing root bumps today - see pics below. I am removing the dome lids for a few hours a day for the next few days to encourage growth slowly. Some of these are the smaller clones I expected to die.

Since the clones are doing well, I'm adjusting the light schedule for the big tent to 16:8 for a few days, then I plan to move to 14:10 while I flush for a couple days, and finally 12:12 next week when they get a transition nutrient dose for one week to help begin flowering.

April 22nd - Light maintenance, I topped off the reservoirs - the biggest plant is about 26" across and still super healthy, 13 growing tips. It drank about twice as much as the other plants, so when I topped it off I added ~550ppm solution of 3-2-1 Micro-Grow-Bloom + a little Hydroguard, poured through the top of the Hydroton to expose the whole root system to the Hydroguard. Then I added about 1 liter of light PH 5.6 filtered water with a small amount of Hydroguard to all three plants the same way. I'm adding only water to the plants for the rest of the week before starting the next nutrient phase for transition to flowering.

I took 4 x clones from the critical plant, that plant is about 1.5 to 2 weeks from flowering so there will be room in the veg tent To make room for these clones I had to remove 4 x JH#2 clones that were a little too big in the stem and were showing signs of a bubble in their stems, which were admittedly too thick for cloning - it was an experiment, oh, well, I already have a few good clones anyway...

The clones all look good, 1 each of the JH#1 and JH#2 clones are showing good root growth already and should be ready for prime time in about a week, Some of the other are showing first root bumps, so I expect they'll be just a day behind. The 3 day old clones of each type look great still, I've misted with plain water twice a day for the last 2 days and the deep nitrogen green has washed out a bit, good.

April 23rd - no maintenance. The plants look great and the clones all still look good. A few clones ready for tomorrow, so I'll be moving things around and beginning flowering cycle for all three original plants, as I now have viable clones from both Jack Herer plants and the clones from the Critical are now a couple days old and not showing any stress, I'm comfortable starting 12:12 tomorrow, and if I happen to need a couple more clones from it, I can still take them this coming week.

saint0192 said:

So I actually have a bunch (6) of Raspberry Pis deployes around my house, in rooms, garage, basement, furnace room, etc.,, that have an Arduino nano hung off them to manage MQ5, MQ7, MQ135, and MQ2 analog sensors for watching various air quality stuff because the Pis can't do analog sensors without an A2D converter. That is why I'm thinking I'm going to add on PH and TDS sensors eventually. I may even add CO2 and get sensors for that, but they are significantly more expensive, and I'm not sure my grow is big enough to need them, based on current ridiculously awesome results... That being said, I may add it anyway, because I love coding stuff. I also think it might be incredibly cool to code up a stepper motor and sonar distance sensor to auto adjust light height...

The current iteration for environmental controls is specific to the hardware, specifically the Digital Loggers Web Power switch, and it doesn't have a lot of error handling yet, but as that develops, I am definitely planning to open source it all.

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Looks dope. Are you going to top them soon?

April 24th - maintenance day - I am moving the three big plants to the flowering tent under 12:12 lighting with one week of transitional nutrients. I have been concerned about the roots up until now, but I believe I have that solved, as all three plants are showing lush white root growth. I'm also going to fill the reservoirs up to about 1 inch below the net pots, as that seems to make them happy still.
The transitional nutrients are as follows:
3 gallons of filtered water
5ml Armor Si
5ml CaliMagic
10ml Micro
10ml Grow
10ml Bloom
6ml Hydroguard
PH balanced to 5.6
Final PPM approximately 725

The freshly rooted clones were put into the veg tent with the following nutrients:
3ml Armor Si
3ml CaliMagic
5ml Micro
5ml Grow
5ml Bloom
3ml Hydroguard
PH balanced to 5.6
Final PPM approximately 425

I'll be working with Root Riot cubes and Rapid Rooters next cycle to compare them, and I got a nice propagater tray with multiple vents to make this all easier and less work than with all the separate cloning bubblers. The clones were placed in the veg tent with the light at 40" or so above the tops and a small dome lid over them for a few days until the roots hit the reservoir water.

Faerystrange said:

Looks dope. Are you going to top them soon?

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Thanks!
I pinched off the main stem about two weeks ago and spread out the branches with wires, I'll be pruning a little here and there over the next couple weeks during the beginning of 12:12 lighting to prep for final flowering tips. I currently have about 38 good strong growing tips between the three plants that I'll continue to spread out so they get lots of light and form good colas. The big Jack Herer plant seems to love being spread out like that, it looks very Sativa. The smaller Jack Herer plant is a different phenotype, more Indica, and was harder to tease the branches outward, and the critical acted the same way. Both of those plants are now about 2 feet across, and the big Jack plant is almost 30" across.

saint0192 said:

Thanks!
I pinched off the main stem about two weeks ago and spread out the branches with wires, I'll be pruning a little here and there over the next couple weeks during the beginning of 12:12 lighting to prep for final flowering tips. I currently have about 38 good strong growing tips between the three plants that I'll continue to spread out so they get lots of light and form good colas. The big Jack Herer plant seems to love being spread out like that, it looks very Sativa. The smaller Jack Herer plant is a different phenotype, more Indica, and was harder to tease the branches outward, and the critical acted the same way. Both of those plants are now about 2 feet across, and the big Jack plant is almost 30" across.

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I was planning to lsd my very compact plants after a second topping they are currently topped at 4 nodes .....do you have any suggestions on when and how to manipulate for lateral growth? I have florists wire and tape....as well as a stretchy lattice for a screen

Faerystrange said:

I was planning to lsd my very compact plants after a second topping they are currently topped at 4 nodes .....do you have any suggestions on when and how to manipulate for lateral growth? I have florists wire and tape....as well as a stretchy lattice for a screen

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I started around 2 weeks ago, at around 5th week from seed, 3rd week of vegetative growth, but really, as soon as you have some branches that have 3rd or 4th set of leaves and are still springy you can start training them outward, the earlier the better, IMO. I probably could have started a week earlier than I pinched off the top. Two of my plants really fought to stay compact, so I trimmed all the undergrowth out from the bottom to concentrate the growth at the canopy and provide airflow, then adjusted them daily, sometimes more than once a day. When I trimmed the undercarriage, I did it over a few days to clean it out good without really stressing the plants. The growth at the canopy has been so fast after that, I actually still have to trim huge fan leaves daily because they keep growing right over the growing tips so fast.

Where do you tie your plants please ? As in where do you tie down what materials do you use and are you manipulating the main stem?

Faerystrange said:

Where do you tie your plants please ? As in where do you tie down what materials do you use and are you manipulating the main stem?

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I gorilla taped 14 gauge electrical wire to the top of my DWC buckets. 14 gauge wire is pretty stiff, but also still fairly easy to manipulate. The pieces of wire are 12-15" long. The part where I taped it down to the top of my DWC buckets is bent into a 'v' under the tape to provide a rigid base, which allows me to use the wire to steer the branch left/right as well as pull the tip outward. Once the wire is taped down, I simply loop the other end of the wire roughly halfway between leaf nodes toward the outer end of the branch. Not the last node, usually the second to last, make sure you're careful, those new nodes can be damaged fairly easy. Start by just pulling it down slightly. I adjusted mine a couple times a day, but TBH it probably wasn't necessary, but what else am I gonna do right now in this lockdown but play with the plants...

Check my April 11th post - that was the day I started tying branches down - there are a couple good pics there of how I did it, and where on the branches.

April 25th - no maintenance on the plants that just started flowering. I gave them the day to recover from light trimming and to get used to the new nutrient mix. The plants really like the nutrient mix and the higher water level, the leaves just stood straight up and all the foliage filed in today. Nice.

The small clones I placed in the veg tent looked ok until I left the humidity dome of for a while and set the controller to let humidity climb to about 60%. Then I went shopping. When I came back 1 was very wilted, like bad salad greens, and the other two drooped a little bit. I swapped out the injured clone with another from the cloners that had great roots showing today. I top fed them all from the reservoir, heavily misted them and the inside of the dome lids, and left them alone except for another mist this evening. I currently have 2 x JH#1 and 1 x JH#2 in the veg tent.

All the remaining clones in the cloners look about the same, all still unstressed. I have left:
6 x JH#1
2 x JH#2
4 x Critical
So not worried.

saint0192 said:

March 28th - Checked nutrients, water level, and PH. PH was up to ~6.25, so I adjusted it down to ~5.75. Water level was fine, as was PPM, which was still ~800PPM. The plants look fantastic, with a large mat of roots formed on all 3, and JH 1 and 2 are starting to see side branches grow. Also in the pictures was my badass bacon and bleu burger I had for supper. It was good.

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Bro that cheeseburger with the bacon looks so amazing #DROOL

Cannabro said:

Bro that cheeseburger with the bacon looks so amazing #DROOL

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LOL. I was wondering if anyone was gonna see that!

saint0192 said:

LOL. I was wondering if anyone was gonna see that!

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Lmfao That burger inspired to make one i just keep forgetting to pull the ground beef out the freezer lol

April 26th - May 9th - I was super overwhelmed between work and plants and clones and life, and didn't log as much as I should have. I took pics but did not log actions. Basically I moved 2 x JH1 and 1 x JH#2 from clones into the veg tent, mixing ~300ppm equal GH parts Flora series + 3ml Armor Si + 3ml CaliMagic + 3ml Hydroguard and kept dome lids on. I didn't change out the reservoirs for 2 weeks, just topped off and adjusted PH. In the middle I rebalanced the reservoirs with +Flora Gro and Micro up to ~400ppm. The large plants I filled once with:

7ml Armor Si
5ml CaliMagic
10ml Micro
10ml Grow
10ml Bloom
7ml Liquid KoolBloom
7ml Hydroguard
PH to 5.6

And just did the same, topped off every few days, rebalancing with + equal parts all three Flora series back up to ~650ppm. I completely replaced the reservoirs with the same formula again today.
I found the sweet spot in these buckets is 3 gallons + 2 quarts.

The plants continued to grow well through this period, Every couple days I use my wire system to continue to spread the branches out further on the flowering plants. They are now hedges with a main trunk that is almost 2" thick. The biggest plant is drinking 3/4 gallon a day, the smaller two are close to 1/2 gallon per day. The first three clones, 2 x JH#1 and 1 x JH#2 have started to grow fast and have lots of short roots down into the reservoir now. The 2 clones in the pics with dome lids are Critical clones and will keep the domes for a few days to grow more roots before getting full light.

May 11th - no maintenance today other than to trim the flowering plants a bit and grab some pics. 1st flowers are very visible now finally, and when the pics are zoomed, you can see the beginning of trichomes starting.

May 27th - It's been a while again. I've been just waiting until the reservoirs are down by half and then topping off with nutrient mixture, then adjusting PH. My nutrient mixture for the flowering plants is currently:

4.5 gallons of filtered water
9ml of Armor Si
6ml of CaliMagic
22.5 ml of Flora Micro
15ml of Flora Grow
36ml of Flora Bloom
30ml of Liquid KoolBloom
9ml HydroGuard
PH to ~5.75
Final PPM ~970ppm
Then use that mixture to top off the reservoirs one by one, adjusting final PH to 5.75

The 2nd crop of clones is being fed the same way. The mixture for those is currently:
4 gallons of filtered water
8ml Armor Si
6ml CaliMagic
22.5ml Flora Micro
15ml Flora Grow
7ml Flora Bloom
8ml HydroGuard
PH to 5.75
Final PPM ~690ppm
Then use that mixture to top off the reservoirs one by one, adjusting final PH to 5.75

This is the end of week 4 for the 1st crop, they are budding up nicely, I expect the next 2 weeks should see lots more bud growth. The Critical is a really beautiful plant, farker gorgeous leaves, hints of purple in the stems, and the buds are bigger than the Jack Herer now.