Aero-Soil Hybrid: Lemon Skunk, Jock Horror, LA Woman

Looking good buddy!! Check out my grow in my Sig!!

So today the leaves are lookin pretty droopy. I may have given them too much food the other day. Perhaps I should stick with 1/2 strength for a little while longer. Before I was giving them nothing. Other than that things are looking good... to me at least. They are still growing pretty well, so I'm happy. The auto is still hangin in there, but I'm ready to move her out of the way.

I included some pics - this time with roots.

P.S. - the water is dark lookin because when I fed them, I gave them too much and some dripped down into the rez

Well I kept getting over-watered symptoms and everything was growing pretty slow overall. They've been vegging for like 6 or 7 weeks, and they look like they're 3 weeks old - in soil. Pretty much my problem is the aero sprayers are pointed up, so my soil pots get too wet. I figured that once the roots got long enough, they would block the water from hitting the pots, but that's not so. I think the only way to continue heading in this direction is to rework the sprayer unit so that the sprayers are right under the pots, and pointing down.

I've wasted enough time having things not grow that it negates any speed I would have gained from going hydro, so I'm gonna give up on this "experiment" for now and try to go with what works. Things with the DWC bucket have been getting better and easier to maintain. I've found that the trick is to use a lot less nutrients than the bottle says. Plus, now that I have my lights cooled, and my rez wrapped, my PH doesn't go as crazy.

So about 5 days ago I shutoff the aero unit, and put more water, and air stones in the rez. A couple days later I put in 1/8 strength grow nutes. The next day I finally started seeing some growth. Then, I PHed the water down to 5.8 and upped the nutes to 1/4 strength, added calcium and humic acid (note - don't combine nutrients before adding them; when I mixed the humic acid and calplex, the stuff started bubbling. I'm sure I lost some calcium to that). I left everything alone for a day and a half, and when I checked on things I was blown away. I've never seen so much plant growth in such as short amount of time. Everything has been tied down for a few days, so the extra inch added to the top of the canopy was a lot of growth for one night. The plants have filled in the top of the rez, and based off of similar (except for the whole soil/hydro thing) grows, it looks like I could start flowering now. I gotta wait for the auto to finish, though. She's only a couple weeks away from being done, but if the other girls start getting out of control, I'll chop her early and switch the lights to 12/12.

I'll try to get pictures tomorrow.

here are some pics

I went ahead and pulled the auto today. I was lowering the PH, and I lowered too much (I'm using citric acid, which is really strong), so instead of adding more water and taking some out of the rez and so forth, I just pulled her, because she doesn't have much time left anyway and my other plants are taking up space really quickly.

I cleaned up the lowest inch of the plants, and did some topping to my Jock Horror to let the others catch up a bit more. The lights are now at 12/12.

They are growin! The first picture (*edit* - actually second. Idk why it mixed them up) is what I saw when I opened the cab. The second one was after I massacred it by tying it down and bending some branches. The Jock Horror is definitely a power grower. She is the biggest and growing the fastest, with really tight internode spacing. I didn't realize hydro growing leaves so much young growth. I went to bend one of the branches 5-7 nodes down on her, and it just snapped like a thin celery stick -even though for its thickness it should have been able to bend, if it were grown in soil, I guess.

The bubbles weren't reaching parts of the rez, so I got a more powerful air pump w/ 4 8" stones in there now. It puts out 65 liters/min, which is 1030 gallons/hour, so my rez now looks like a rolling boil. I just hope it's not too much action for the microbes. Another thing I noticed about this pump (ecoplus air 3) is that the air seemed to be coming out the tubes kinda warm. I hope that doesn't turn out to be a huge problem. My rez was able to handle a 300 gallon/hour water pump doing intervals, and that didn't get too warm. We'll see. I went ahead and put the pump on the outside of the cab, bacause it seems like it's gonna run pretty warm.

The girls have taken the tying and bending well. The canopy was pretty even when I checked on them.

I made some changes to my ventilation. It was getting really humid in there - up to 80% with lights off, 60-70% lights on. Basically I moved my 6" inline fan to the other side, and hooked ducting from the booster fan to where the new intake for the lights is. The diagram explains it better:

**Edit - I for to label the picture. The left is BEFORE; the right is AFTER.
Also, the little grey box inside the cab is a homemade filter. I made it out of two net cups, some thin cotton cleaning cloth, and activated carbon. It doesn't really look like it does in the diagram. Some carbon is folded up in the cloth, and sandwiched between the two net cups, and a rubber band or something holds them together. I just stuck it in the cab exhaust hole - it fits perfect because it is a 4" net cup, and a 4" hole.

This is how things looked as of today

A couple times since I've been using citric acid for ph down, I;ve read the ph @ 4.5-5.1 after not checking on the plants for a few days. I've been PH-ing them back up to 5.4-5.5, and the more water I add, the less the swings, but the acidity of citric acid is hard to fight. I guess it releases slow or something. I haven't used it in more than a week now, just PH up. I add nutrients when I add water at 1/4 strength. I noticed today that some lower leaves were yellowing and a few had some crazy lookin spots. I'm guessing the spots are due to the low swings in PH. Some of the tops were showing signs of heat stress, so I did some bending and tieing. A friend of mine is moving, so he gave me tons of various nutrients and supplements. I got some stuff that you're supposed to add to the rez to help the plants deal with heat stress. I might try it out if I need it later on.

I've included some pictures. The first one is of the canopy when I opened the cab. The second and third are of the canopy after I bent and tied. The forth is of a tall branch that was hanging out near the edge of the reflector. The 5th picture shows it bent down - you can see 4-5 bud sites. The 6th is of the crazy spots. The 7th is of a heat stressed bud.

Things have been going well. I got a better feel for the citric acid. You have to dissolve it in water, then add it slowly. I added Bonicare Silica Blast that a friend gave me, as well as Mycorrhizae Inoculant. The silica has really helped with heat stress. I've had some leaves within 5-6 inches of the bulb, with less leaf edge curling associated with heat stress. The Mycorrhizae is supposed to help keep a good microbe balance. So far I haven't changed my rez. I haven't seen any issues so far, but I may change it out near the end, not sure yet.

The Jock Horror smells something fruity, and the Lemon Skunk smells like bubblegum. LA Woman doesn't seem to have a particular smell, but her buds are getting big. She trails not too far behind the Jock Horror in terms of bud production. The Alaskan Ice sucks as far as budding goes. It's puny. Maybe this particular pheno just wants more food than the rest, idk. I guess this kinda thing happens when you run multiple strains in one rez. Lesson learned. Despite AI's shitty growth, I think I'm still gonna get my QP i wanted from this grow. I really hope so at least.

Pics: The first 3 are self explanatory. #4 and #5 are of Jock Horror. #6 (the pic name is mislabeled) is LA Woman. #7 is Lemon Skunk. And the last one is Alaskan Ice.

*edit - the quality of these pics aren't that great because my camera was on some crazy setting

These picture were actually from a week ago. The first pic is a wide shot. The next 5 are of Jock Horror, followed by 2 shots of Alaskan Ice, then one of Lemon Skunk, then 1 AI, then 2 LA Woman.

I've pulled a few top LA Woman buds which were pretty ripe to smoke, and they are really good. Even without a cure it still has a nice taste, and very potent. The main harvest will definitely get a cure though. I finally got a PPM meter and it turns out last week I was right at around 1700ppm. Since then I've just been giving them water in the rez.

LA Woman is definitely the fastest finisher. It looks like Jock Horror is gonna come in second, and we'll have to see for the other two.

The first picture is a wide shot. The next 4 are Alaskan Ice, 3 Jock Horrors, 1 LA Woman, and the Lemon Skunk

nice going, i wanna know how you like the jock horror. Picked up 10 fem jock horrors

Nice mix too, im going all jocks (6) then a mix

FrankieJ23 said:

nice going, i wanna know how you like the jock horror. Picked up 10 fem jock horrors

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So far she's been the strongest grower. And she looks like she'd gonna yield the most too.

subd is your ventelation working out?

It works as far as humidity goes, but nothing can be done about the heat when outside temps are in the 90s high, and mid 70s low. My cab temps stay in the low 90s on a bad day; and in the upper 80s on a good day. I just got back from out of town and found that not having the AC on in the house made my cab's max temp get to 94F. Some of the tips of my leaves are starting to dry and curl up, and my PH crept really low (as soon as I saw the PH meter's reading accelerate past 5.1 I left to remedy the situation), I gave the rez about 4-5 gallons of water and 15 tbs of silica and the PH went back up to 5.2. Tomorrow I'll give it a bit of PH up if it needs it.

Silica has really helped me through this grow so far. It pushes PH up, which can be useful sometimes after adding nutes; but what it really does well is help my plants deal with the heat in that little cab. I'm pretty sure that after this grow, growing (with HID lights) is out of the question until maybe mid September.

The temps have been really high outside, so my cab is also hot. My highs have been consistently around 94F. Silica helps, but that is way too hot, so I connected a 4in ducting to one of the house AC duct lines running under the house. The length of the ducting is about 6', so it hopefully shouldn't be too much work for my main inline fan. I could feel cool air coming into the intake and from the exhausted air. The plants are sleeping at the moment, so I'll be able to see what the low temps are when I check the on them tonight. If I can get highs down to 86F I'll bee happy. I think I may even be able to somewhat control the flow of the cool air by opening and closing the vent that the AC line that I spliced into flows to.

Nice Plants! Hows things looking now? Thinking about the Jock Horror next grow got those and N.L and Satori., really interested in a smoke report when able...