First soiless grow - coco/perlite handwatered DTW

So I finally got my stuff together and after a long 3 year break, I am growing the love of my life again (shhhh... don't tell the wife).

First and foremost, feel free to post in my journal. This is my first soiless grow under a 250w HPS in a growcell 1m x 1m x 2m tent. I'm running the HPS under a cheapo hood vented with a 6" inline fan. So any advice/constructive criticism is most welcome. I went with a 250w because daytime temps never really get below 20 degrees (C) here. Average summer temp is about 30c (or 86f for the dinosaurs).

Medium is 50/50 coco/perlite and nutes I have are the FloraDuo 2 part series. I was advised to hand water my first grow so I could learn at my own pace and I am so glad that I did. I am so in-tune with my babies it's sort of weird.

Let me add that I am a do'er. I learn the best by trial and error. I know how to read/research but there's nothing like getting your teeth right into it; biting off more than you can chew and then chewing like hell. And as you're about to find out I don't mind a bit of a yarn.

I am doing this with bagseed. I have some seedbank seeds on the way and I wanted to crash-test-dummy on something I don't care about first. This is not just ordinary bagseed. I only keep the best seeds from the best weed I smoke (and that's a lot. Abt a 1/4 of nice gear a week - more for shitty buds). 99.9% of seeds that I find I throw in the bin.

Over the years I've found this to be an effective method of growing bagseed. I know it's frowned upon here but sometimes you just gotta live with what you've got. Getting quality EU seeds into Oz can be difficult and risky if you don't have anyone "clean" to send them to. I find most of my friends either love weed or hate it. Those that love it smoke it. Those that hate it, don't want anything to do with it. Catch-22 when you don't want to send them to your grow address.

Either way, this is not about smoke. This is about ensuring I can handle the grow when I do it properly (if I do it properly I understand - seeds + the free resend may get snapped by customs yet so fingers crossed). Really looking forward to the proper grow as we don't get much top notch gear around here. Most of the time it's grab what you can get or go without and that makes for real bad quality gear being sold at a premium price. Pitiful I know but hey, I just want to spark one up and blow the day's troubles away not spend 1/2 my life chasing the shit.

This journal is also about documenting what I've learned. And trust me, there's been a lot in the past month or 2. So bear with me while I dribble crap for a while. Pics I will post soon.

Importance of PH and EC/PPM
So, I've been at this address for about 9-10 years now. Great little spot on acreage. No amenities like water/sewerage so we bio our waste and collect rain water. Perfect for growing so first year I was here in went about 50 seeds. All started well but soon enough I was facing deficiencies that I could never seem to correct. I was using A-grade soil that I composted and made up myself. Problem was I was constantly watering with soft water (28ppm) and very alkaline from the lime/concrete tank. I have not tested any water out of there under 9.2 yet. Highest was 10.2 after a heavy rain event. The low ppm wasn't the issue in soil, my soil contained more than enough to compensate, the problem was extreme nutrient lockout. Most notably nitrogen (yellow leaves almost immediately after seedling stage). Buds were okay but still well below what I expected.

It wasn't until I started this grow that I bought myself a ph test kit. The guy I spoke to at the hydro store said I should be right without a ppm until later into veg. So off I went with my new liquid test kit and started to test every friggen thing I could find. Ha! Soil in every part of my yard. Water from the tank, water from my dams, water from puddles, water trapped in the kid's toy dump trucks laying in the yard. I used about 1/2 the bottle of test solution in 2 days lol...

After 2 rounds of calcium and magnesium deficiencies in this grow I bought a ppm meter and found my tank water to be 28ppm. Derp. No wonder I'm having probs Guy at the growstore said the coco was buffered with calmag so I wouldn't need it. Lesson learned: understand your enemy before fighting the battle.

So now I know why all my grows here have been very poor. I thought lack of sun was the issue (50+ meter old large trees everywhere) but clearly it's not. I have spots that get a solid 8 hours of direct sun and I understand that this should be more than enough.

So my plan is this... Get the quality strain, seed it so I can keep the genetics and enjoy a happy life growing and smoking top notch gear for myself. I ordered from bonsai which had an awesome freeby deal with orders over 40 pounds. 12 free seeds + the 10 that I ordered should do the trick. I just hope to the high heavens that they make it through.

Enough dribbling, I'm going to chop a bowl and checkout the Gold Coast 600 on TV

I found some pics that I took of a real mutant of a plant that didn't graduate from the foam cups. This seed was soaked in my tank water and right from the time it poked its head up it had strange stuff going on. From the high alkalinity no doubts. It sprouted with what appeared to be a cal and mg deficiency. Not sure, it's growth was wrinkled like an old man, had rust blotches all through the leaves and yellowed between the veins.

Not sure if this pic does justice but it was a brownie strange sort of colour. At first I thought it was a virus or russets but as you can see it chugged along until I incinerated it (in-case it was some nasty virus or death bugs ).

So I think I have 2 males. Preflowers on 2 are showing the V of heavenly fluff. The other 2 basically have balls on sticks (like a lollipop). It's been that long since I've grown a male. A lot of the older seeds I have must be fem seeds because I have not seen a male in about 18 years. Unfortunately, those seeds are 10-15 years old and I couldn't get them to germinate.

Here are the boys and girls. Boys are out already. They were the 2 on the left. Little mini hempy is going outside when I flower the other 2. He's my outdoor hempy experiment

The plants are about a month old from seed. This is the end of their second week in coco/perlite. They were a soil to hydro transfer and it went pretty well. That little chunky nugget on the bottom right is slow but as tough as nails.

Missing leaves were the deficient affected areas. Aaaaaaand light burn, heat stress, nute burn, cal/mg deficiencies, damn mutha f#$%'ing grasshoppers in there. Gawd, it's been a roller coaster but they are finally starting to get moving. I am now testing the boundaries of nutes that I can feed them.



More pics to come of the grasshopper damage. You can see lil' hempy nearly got wiped out

This little one smells skunky already. She's the first thing I smell when I crack open the tent for their morning feed. Grasshopper had a crack at this one but didn't get far. I guess it whaled the little guy. I sparked up a doobie with the leaf I cut off this and got a very nice buzz. Looking forward to this one



And here's little hempy with the grasshopper damage. The damage to the leaf on the right happened in one night. I was not a happy camper. The cal/mg deficiency has been sorted and she's just starting to fire up again. One more night with Mr. GrassHopper and it may not have lived to tell the tale.

So it seems 1.0 - 1.1ec is my max. Gave a small 1.2 feed a few days back and got signs of nute burn fairly quickly. Also had another strange problem. I think my feeding schedule needed to be updated. Measuring my runoff ph it had climbed to 7.4 when it was always around 6.1 - 6.3. I (stupidly) flushed with the usual 5.8 and got signs of ph fluctuation stress. This has slowed them down a bit (again.. lol). But they are moving along so I'm going to switch to flower on Sunday as I want to get this out of the way so I can start my seedbank seeds.

My previous watering schedule was to water thoroughly every 2-3 days and give small (1/2 cup) feeds 3 times a day. I think that I was letting the coco dry out too much. I had this problem early on as well. Once I started the 3 smaller feeds per day with a larger feed every 2-3 days the problem was sorted but I guess this is just a sign the ladies want more. So I've changed my schedule to a decent water each day with 2 smaller feeds between. All up the girls are drinking about 600-700ml per day or thereabouts. My smaller feeds are not getting any runoff. My larger feed gets about 5-10% runoff.

The problem is calmag. It raises the ph of my nute mix over time (if I don't use it, the mix stays pretty stable - but I have to use it because my water is like 0.02 ec). Not sure how I combat this in hempy. Runoff ph was the same as the others and the bottom res is juiced up for a few days. Might just have to feed more often to flush out the old and in with the new.

I find this feed regime is helping with detecting problems before they even show visible signs. I know straight away the girls have stopped drinking and something is about to rear its ugly head.

Pics up next. I am still waiting on my loupe to arrive so the pics of the nute burn/ph stress aren't that great.

Here's a current shot of the garden. Growth has not been explosive, but they do seem to be moving along. Had to tie that sativa dominant/looking one down. It exploded overnight and had grown into my airflow fan path. She does not like the wind at all this girl (see the curl on her upper leaves)

Managed to snap a shot of the first signs of nute burn. Sorry about the quality. I am using my old iphone 4 because I drowned my 6.

This is what early stage heat stress looks like as well. I knew it was nute burn though. Had just upped the ec, temps were fine, light is a bit too far away if anything.



And this was taken today

Nice looking garden!!!!!! Love seeing a soiless grow!!!!

a mongo frog said:

Nice looking garden!!!!!! Love seeing a soiless grow!!!!

Click to expand...

Thanks frog! Even though they've had a rough life, they're still chugging along better than I could have hoped for

Nice grow, I'm doing my first soiless as well so I'll follow.

Girls have been a week into flower. Here's a couple of pics taken in the past 3 days. I ditched calmag and started feeding full strength nutes. They've exploded since. Even little nugget has grown 3-4 inches higher. That's a big step for the girl... lol

I upgraded the light to a 600w hps in a cooltube. My little 250cfm 6" inline booster fan seems to be venting it fine. I don't use a filter so I'm guessing that's why. I have the cash for a decent inline can fan. Might wait on that now that my Bonza seeds arrived. I am moving out to a 3m x 1.5m shed. Tent will house 2 mums while I clone the shit out of them and flower under probably a 1000w and 600w. Not sure yet. I sort of didn't plan for the seeds making it.

First pic was a day after I ditched calmag.


Second was taken last night in the dark with a flash. Just after I had setup the cooltube. They look a bit unhappy because I knocked them around a bit setting everything up. I unleashed the branchy one from its ropes too. Not going to focus too much more on training now that I have the 600w. Finish these girls off and get my new setup rolling. Not sure what to make of the yellowing tips. It's only visible under the hps and with a flash. In normal light they look fine. It's getting better and better under the hps since I ditched calmag, so I hope it's not anything major :/


Check this shit out. Upgrading the light has caused the tent to light up like a damn xmas tree!! There were a few light leaks before I had already patched with tape but this 600w is just showing the cheap tent's true colours... lmao It's like this everywhere there's the orange lining stuff. Had to turn off flash so you can see it.

Just gone 3 weeks into flower. I am finally starting to get the canopy sorted with a lot of training. Plants have been bottom feed until the top 1/8-1/4 is bone dry and then I water everything thoroughly again. Plant on the right I think does not like the air flow. It's not a heat issue as my house is temp controlled at 25c through the day and inside the tent is never above 0.4-0.5 ambient. There is a lot of airflow in there just with the extractor fan running on 100% and it has seemed that any direct air from a fan makes it much, much worse.

Another thing I have noticed is that the indica dominant one seems to have turned more sativa like the other. Perils of bagseed I guess. Either way I am more than happy with the results. A few extra zips of bud won't go to waste in my household

Sorry about the light in the pics. I can't be bothered pulling them out. They do look nice and healthy under normal light. Budding seems to be slower like sativa so I guess I'm in for a longer haul...

Oh and I forgot to mention the smell. Very citrus like. Even the little chunky one which started out skunky now has the same fruity citrus smell as the other. I don't have a carbon filter yet the smell is not noticeable unless you're standing at the vent and even then it's not a very strong odour. Doesn't matter too much anyway. Nearest neighbour is only about 500-600m away