Lowryder DWC-bucket grow

So I've been growing for about a year now and I've decided to mark the anniversary by doing another grow journal. My first grow was DWC so this grow will too be DWC, but I will remember the lessons I have learned from past experiences, hopefully. I'm going with lowryder because I have a bounty of lowryder seeds to use. I will be using my digital 250 watt MH/HPS and probably some CFLs for supplementary light. I will also be using the General hydroponics Floramicro and Florabloom, mixed generously with super thrive and hydrogen peroxide in five gallons buckets. I will be growing four plants in a closet.

Tonight I selected seven seeds and have begun soaking them in water. I selected seven so that I would be able to pick the best seedlings to put into the buckets and seven is a lucky number in my book. I'm soaking them because I believe that will make the seeds more likely to germinate vigorously. Tomorrow I will begin germinating the seeds. I'll start taking pictures when things start to get interesting.

-A.D.

Day 2

So I wrapped the beans in a wet paper towel and put them in a tupperware container. I tucked this germination chamber in a dark place and I'll be checking it once a day for root tips. Once they germinate I'll be planting them in solo cups with Fox Farms light warrior soil under a humidity dome using ~50 watts of cool light CFLs. I'll keep them under that for a week or two before moving them into the DWC buckets and under the 250 watter.

-AD

Day 3

I checked the seeds today, one of them has sprouted a root tip. I assume that the rest will sprout soon too and I will be planting them tomorrow or the day after. Nothing further to report. blast off!

-AD

Day 14

So with the holidays going on and being in the middle of moving to a new place I've been very distracted and busy. I checked on my poor seeds that I had forgotten (neglected) yesterday evening. All of them but three had sprouted, some had cotyledons looking for light. They all had long tangly roots. I was prepared to toss these seeds and start some more, but it looks like I might recover these so why not?

I sprayed the sprouts with a superthrive solution. I then planted all of the sprouts into solo cups filled with Fox Farms Light Warrior. I watered the soil with weak solution of 3/4 tsp each floramicro, floragro, and florabloom per gallon and 1.5 drops of superthrive per gallon. I did this because in my experience this soil needs a little bit of a nute boost the get my Lowryder going. Before the watering the solution was aerated with an airstone and airpump for thirty minutes to remove chlorine and add oxygen. The solo cups have five holes cut in their bottoms for drainage. All of the sprouts are under a pair of LED panels. The LED panels are only an inch or two away from the sprouts and are set up leaning against each other to make an A-frame of light with the solo cups nestled betwixt them. I'll keep them under that until they become established in the soil and get some healthy roots going, so maybe a week to ten days. We'll see. After that they will be moved to five gallon DWC buckets and under the 250 watt HID. I will be keeping them in their soil clump when I place them in the net buckets, surrounding the soil with hydroton to keep it from sifting down into the nutrient solution. I'm doing it this way because it is my belief that the good bacteria and fungus in the soil will make a healthier roots system that will thrive in the DWC. The lights are going to be on 24/7, until I find some reason to change my mind.

My hope is now to grow six five-gallon buckets and ending up with three or four females and to pull over an ounce per a female. This may be ambitious for me at the moment, but I've always been both optimistic in general and confident (cocky?) about my skill set. Time will tell. Getting four+ ounces at the end of February would be spectacular.

-AD

Day 19

The sprouts are looking healthy and hale. They were looking a bit stretched out so I upped their lighting. They used to be under an A-frame arrangement of two 16 watt LED panels. Now they are inside of a cube shaped bunker made of five LED panels, four acting as walls with one resting on top of the others as a ceiling and the sprouts nestled inside of this construction. The little plants are responding well to this, they are getting bigger leaves instead of taller stalks. I've also started sitting them in a window sill the receives direct sun light in the morning for a few hours. I haven't watered the plants since I first put them into their solo cups. About every other day I have been spraying them with a weak super thrive solution. I will transplant them to their final 5 gallon DWC bucket homes in the next three or four days and put them under the HID then.


-AD

Day 25

A few days ago the plants were looking heat stressed and withered. I removed the top led panel from the led cube the plants were bunkered inside of and this alleviated the problem. I also set up my oscillating fan to circulate air over them. I also have been giving them ample mistings with a weak super thrive solution. They still look a little bit withered, but they are growing again/still. Most of them are working on their third node. One runt is struggling with its first node still, but it looks healthier every day so I keep it around.

Today I moved all of the plants into their DWC buckets. Each buckets has ~4 gallons of water, 3 drops super thrive, 7.5 mL floramicro, 15 ml florabloom, and a drop of teatree oil. The nutrients are fairly weak, but seeing as the plants don't even have roots down into the buckets, why waste nutrients? I also didn't pH the water, I've found that when using the Lucas formula (1 part floramicro : 2 parts florabloom) and my local water I don't need to bother. I transferred the plants from their solo cups into the net-pot-bucket lids. The bottom of each net pot has a ~5 cm layer of hydroton, the solo-cup-shaped hunks of soil sit on top of this and are then surround and capped with hydroton. Imagine a tiny planet with a crust of hydroton and a core of damp FF Light warrior and roots and a plant poking out of its north pole. The six buckets are currently being lit by 4 26watt blue CFLs and 2 42watt red CFLs that are nestled amongst the buckets to provide ample side lighting. Soon I will hang the 250 HID above these to complete the set up. After that it will be a matter of daily monitoring of the plants health and weekly changing of the nute solutions ins the buckets. So by my estimate the harvest date should be the weekend of February 13th-15th. Happy Valentines indeed!

-AD

Day 29

I hung the 250 watt MH yesterday. I forget how hot that bulb gets. The temperature in the closet now hovers in the high 80s. I removed the two 42 watt red CFLs in an attempt to reduce the heat. The plants have all been in this high heat for over 24 hours and they seem to be thriving. All of the leaves reach eagerly for the MH bulb hung ~15 inches above them. None of them appear limp or to be wilting. Five of the six plants are working on their 4th node. There is one runt that has only one cotyledon, one tiny leaf at its first node, and two tiny little leaflet buds for a 2nd node. It hasn't perished yet, so I'm waiting to see if it amounts to anything.

The plants should begin to show sex soon. Maybe within the next four to six days. I guess I'll see soon enough.

-AD

Day 33 - Reservoir change day


So it has been eight days since I moved the plants into their buckets. All but one look to be doing very well. When I was changing their nutrient solutions today I saw that four of the six already had a few long thin roots hanging down into the solution. Before filling each bucket I wiped it out with a cloth soaked in a weak bleach solution. The old solution that I disposed of had some reddish brown mucus blobs at the bottom so I wanted to clean it out before it ever became a problem. I filled each bucket with 4 gals water, 40 mL H2O2, 2 drops tea tree oil, 3 drops superthrive, 11.3 mL floramicro, and 22.5 mL florabloom (except for the runt, which only recieved 7.5mL and 15mL or floramicro and florabloom, respectively). A 50% jump in nutrients is a big jump over just the course of a week, but I started with the nutrients at very low concentrations so now I'm just trying to ramp them up to what I consider full strength (7.5mL micro and 15mL bloom per gallon) without burning them.


Five of the six plants are growing their fifth node. All five of these also have side branching forming at least at the first node, with one of them already showing side branches forming at the third node. The nodes are all very tightly packed, within four or five centimeters above the cotyledons. None of the plants have sexed yet. I now leave a window in the room cracked to allow cold fresh air in, this has allowed me to have all six of my CFLs (four 26watt blues and two 42watt reds) and my 250 watt MH running at the same time and the conditions in the closet remain a comfortable 80 F and 45% humidity. I'll have to close the window when they start to flower due to the odor, but thats when I'll switch to my HPS which is significantly cooler than the MH. If its to hot to use the HPS and all of my CFLs with the window closed I'll switch out the CFLs for my LED panels.

Everything is going very well at the moment. I hope for and I work towards maintaining this good fortune for the next four to six weeks.

-AD

yo dude why is no one replying to your thread , gets some pics up. have you grown good before? how do you get the roots to dangle into the water with a dwc? when you first transfer from seedling into the bucket. ive tried to grow with soil but kept getting shitty oxygen starved roots so doing dwc next

jammin26 said:

yo dude why is no one replying to your thread , gets some pics up.

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I don't think people have been replying because I haven't posted any pics and also this isn't a special grow of any sort; just six lowryders in a closet in DWC buckets. But it doesn't bother me that no one has been posting, this journal is a reference for me later more than anything.

jammin26 said:

have you grown good before?

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I've been growing for a little over a year now. I have a link in my sig to my first grow. I've always been very pleased with the outcomes of my grows.

jammin26 said:

how do you get the roots to dangle into the water with a dwc? when you first transfer from seedling into the bucket. ive tried to grow with soil but kept getting shitty oxygen starved roots so doing dwc next

Click to expand...

I started these plants in 16oz solo cups filled with a good seed starting soil called Light Warrior made by Fox Farms. I let them grow in these cups under my LEDs for a couple of weeks or so. When I was ready to transfer the plants from their solo cups to the DWC buckets I put a 1-2" layer of hydroton in each 6" net pot. After watering the plants a last time, I then gently removed the plants, roots, and soil as a single cup-shaped clod from the solo cups and placed them on the layer of hydroton. I then filled in the remaining space in the net cups with more hydroton to nestle the plants in. I filled the buckets up with nutrient solution up the the bottom of the net pots so that when the bubbles from the air stones reached the surface they would pop and splash solution onto the hydroton. The plants eventually just grew their roots long enough to dangle down into the solution.

Thanks for the questions, I'm always happy to answer them to the best of my knowledge. I'll try to find a digital camera to post some pics of the set up.

-AD

P.S. One of the plants has sexed male. None of the others have sexed yet which leads me to believe they are female. I have noticed in the past that males almost always sexed first and that the later the bloomer the more likely it was female.

Day 42 - Reservoir change day

It has been nine days since the last reservoir change. I chopped one of my plants a couple of days ago and another one today, both were male. I have been able to identity the remaining three big plants as females and the sexual identity of the tiny one is still ambiguous. So the four remaining plants received 4 gallons of water, 30 mL of H2O2, 2 drops of tea tree oil, 3 drops super thrive, 9/8 Tbls (~17mL) floramicro, and 18/8 Tbls (~34mL) of florabloom. I also replaced the MH bulb with a HPS bulb. The current lighting is the 250 watt HPS and four LED panels working as side lighting and reflectors. I don't have any CFLs in the mix right now, but if I can keep the temperature comfortable I hope to add some blue CFLs.

All of the plants have nicely developing root systems; even the dwarf has roots into the reservoir now. They don't seem to be getting taller any more, but they are bushing out very well. The scent is becoming noticeable, but it is still very weak. I'm happy with how things are going and I'm eager to watch these buds begin to swell.

-AD

This is the closet; you can see here the oscillating fan, the LED panels, the 250 HPS, air pumps, air tubing, a white tee shirt acting as a reflector, and some of the plants.


K.R.


E.M.


G.L.


Dwarf-dwarf


Another shot of the closet showing the tangle of wires and tubes.

Day 43

Yesterday I meant to use tablespoons to measure my nutrients but I realized today that I was using a teaspoon measurer, so I only gave the plants 1/3rd as much food as I meant too. To rectify the situation I added 1/2 Tbls of micro and 1 Tbls bloom to raise the concentrations closer to what I intended them to be. I also added 1 tsp of mycorrhizal inoculant to each bucket today.

-AD

Day 48 - Reservoir change day

Today I decided that maintaining Dwarf-Dwarf was more trouble than it was worth, so now I'm down to three plants. Dwarf-Dwarf had not sexed yet, had irregular and asymmetrical node and branch development, and it was much smaller than all of the other plants. So there.

The remaining three plants all received a fresh 3 gallons H2O, 3 drops of Super Thrive, 30 mL floramicro, and 60mL florabloom. They are thriving under the 250 watt HPS and five 14 watt LED panels for supplemental side lighting and reflection. EM and GL both have received LST. KR is doing well, but she isn't showing nearly as vigorous the growth as the other too are experiencing and a few of the leaves near the bottom have begun to yellow. I hypothesize that I under fed KR last week and she has had less nutrients than the other plants. Hopefully she will perk up with the fresh reservoir.


I took some pictures to show the current arrangement of fans and lights and also to show the growth of the plants over the last week. I will post them later tonight when I can find the camera's cable to hook it up to the computer.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how this grow is going. My only disappointment is that I didn't start more plants. I'm glad I started with six instead of four like I had originally planned. At least this is Lowryder and the grow will be completed soon and I'll get to start all over. There are many reasons to pick or avoid auto-flowering strains; the main reason I like them is how many grows I can complete in a set time span. It gives me more opportunities to start over and apply new things that I've learned. I guess I should be able to start applying what I learned from this grow in three or four weeks.

-AD

Day 49

Ok, here are the pictures I took last night. I apologize for the poor quality, but they show the gist of things.


Here is the current setup; a fan pushing air into the closet, a fan pushing air over the plants, five 14 watt LED panels set up to work like reflectors, and the 250 watt HPS. Temperatures stay in the low to mid 80s and the humidity stays in the low 40s to low 50s.


This is GL. She has been trained down in three spots. You can compare to the previous photo and see she is growing well.


This is EM. She has been trained down only in one spot. You can see she has grown well since her last picture too.


This is KR. You can see some of the yellowing on the bottom leaves. You can also see that she hasn't grown as much this past week as the other two. I hope she perks up.

Peace out.

-AD

Day 56 - Reservoir change day

All of the plants received a fresh ~3.6 gallons H2O, 20 mL GH Floramicro, 40mL GH Florabloom, and ~3mL Superthrive. I also did quite a bit of low-stress training and supercropping today. The bulkiness and bushiness of the plants has increased so much I no longer have room for two of the LED panels. Thats fine, however, as the plants have expanded to absorb quite a bit more of the HPS directly. The plants continue to grow quite rapidly from week to week. Their scent is also starting to sweeten up the room. I will post current plant pictures later tomorrow.


-AD