My Overly Ambitious Second Grow!

[BatmanPetersenc]

Fuck, well, thrips are still thriving. I chopped my bushy cover crop a few days after applying beneficial insects, which may have driven ALL THE THRIPS to my cannabis, before any beneficials were established. And I think they were establishing in the cover crop, so I feel that I've doomed those poor little guys.

So I bit the bullet and sprayed the plants yesterday with Captain Jacks Super Insecticidal Soap. I plan to spray tomorrow with Mammoth Canna trim, then captain Jacks a few days after. Just gonna nail them every 3 days for a week or two, and hope there are some beneficial in the soil doing their thing.

Same routine for the 30-ish tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos and cannabis (in decreasing order) that are biding their time under a few extra lights.

Super annoyed about the thrips. Any tips on management are welcome, but it seems rotating IPM will work for now. I'll establish beneficials when I'm not in the midst of an outbreak.

 

[BatmanPetersenc]

So after two solid applications of captain Jacks super insecticidal soap, with an application of Mammoth Cannatrol in between, the thrips seem to be well controlled if not gone. I'll likely spray every 5ish days alternating between these two moving forward.

And the cannabis hiding in my outdoor tomato, pepper and tomato starts:

And all the outdoor stuff:

Some of the tomatoes are very sad and weird. Still figuring that out. The outdoor cannabis is looking over watered. But it'll all get there I think.

 

[BatmanPetersenc]

Hardening off the outdoor cannabis, tomatoes, tomatillos and peppers. It's all been indoors in 6" nursery pots for far too long.

But, I have at least some confirmed rove beetles!

And I haven't seen any thrips since the treatments. My wondering now is whether I should continue spraying or if that will harm my beneficials?

Regardless, I'm feeling less spooked about the thrips. Just gotta stay vigilant I guess.

Some LST on the tallest indoor plant, ready to send them to flower soon!

 

[BatmanPetersenc]

Indoor tent is chugging along. I'm debating spraying as I think the rove beetles are established, hopefully the other predators are as well. I certainly am catching a few rove beetles on my big yellow sticky traps, which I'm feeling bad about but I also am not catching any thrips so that's good.

Outdoor is finally in their forever pots! 30 gallon fabric pots that I will cut the bottoms off of at some point.

Roots were not super great, I think related to watering issues. (Over watering, overreacting with long dryback, repeat for 8ish weeks.) Or possibly because I used nursery pots?

And finally, I debated putting the following problem into a separate post, but I don't want to put the company on blast as I still like their products and customer service:

The HLG 320Rspec FR (that has been powering this tent since the previous Mars Hydro TSL2000L shorted the power cable connection) was occasionally not on when it should have been. Opening the tent to darkness and expecting light is not a good feeling.

I tested different outlets, removed the power strip, etc. And eventually it seemed to turn back on independent of my testing. This happened one other time and I pulled it and put a Spyder Farmer 200-something as a backup.

I emailed customer service at HLG and they responded quickly, asked me to test light with no potentiometer/dimmer. It worked fine with no dimmer, so they sent me a new dimmer. It took an extra week to get here due to tornadoes, so good thing I had a somewhat competent backup.

But the dimmer they sent me is absolutely huge and hangs half-off the light:

The big ol thing also has no percent markings, so I am ballparking it on the settings:

I scratched marks at 0%, 50%, and 100% to get me in the general area and use the photone app to loosely track ppfd etc.

In general, it is just very poor design and not the polished, small potentiometer that came with the light. Hopefully it works, as I currently have some doubts creeping in about the light being dependable. I have to trust customer service, who at least firmly stated that this would resolve the lighting issue.

If you run the HLG 320 Rspec FR with the small stock dimmer, check regularly that your light is working!