Can someone help better understand

[Halloweed]

Bought a loupe but my hand shakes too much lol. From what I see the stalks of the trichs are pretty clear. The heads I'm not so sure of.

Waiting to see some definite amber heads but I think I'm gonna chop this weekend. I don't want to wait too long in case they're overripe.

 

[LoveGrowingIt]

Bought a loupe but my hand shakes too much lol. From what I see the stalks of the trichs are pretty clear. The heads I'm not so sure of.

Waiting to see some definite amber heads but I think I'm gonna chop this weekend. I don't want to wait too long in case they're overripe.

It's the heads that matter. It's also the trichomes on the buds that matter, not the ones on the sugar leaves. I usually don't bother to look at trichomes, however. I just look for dark orange pistils and the overall senescence of the plant. My wife usually has an opinion, as well.

 

[Galgrows]

From the looks of the plant all the signs are there saying it's ready. Before there were loups to see trichs we old timers just judged the readiness by looks. All the hairs are rusty red, no new white ones forming, leaf is degrading to the point of falling off. If the plant does not drink much or dry out by 4-5days these are all signs it's ready. I'm 68yrs old and i just got my eyes checked LOL getting new glasses. Great looking plant i'd be proud to call it mine.

 

[Halloweed]

It's the heads that matter. It's also the trichomes on the buds that matter, not the ones on the sugar leaves. I usually don't bother to look at trichomes, however. I just look for dark orange pistils and the overall senescence of the plant. My wife usually has an opinion, as well.

Yeah, it definitely looks ready. She's getting chopped :)

 

[Halloweed]

From the looks of the plant all the signs are there saying it's ready. Before there were loups to see trichs we old timers just judged the readiness by looks. All the hairs are rusty red, no new white ones forming, leaf is degrading to the point of falling off. If the plant does not drink much or dry out by 4-5days these are all signs it's ready. I'm 68yrs old and i just got my eyes checked LOL getting new glasses. Great looking plant i'd be proud to call it mine.

Thank you. The pistils are brown and curling in and she hasn't been drinking much. The buds are alot frostier than my previous grows. Can't wait to try it.

 

[Week4Bytch]

There has been situations where I had no other choice than to squeeze a lemon but instead of using only lemon I also used apple vinegar and it was just a short temporary fix. I dont like using only citric acid, gave me problems in the past. That said during the first 3 weeks of flower they do like some citric acid, its one of the components of Big Bud from AN.
EDIT: If someone is thinking about buying biobizz ph down just use lemons, they have way more goodies like ascorbic acid, aminoacids, suggars, etc...

What's up @Eledin .. did a search on Citrus Acid and found your post about it, I noticed some products use citric acid (Dr Zymes) and others have it unintentionally, when using fermented oranges as an input. Of course there's tons of info out there for and against citric acid for the garden but since you have some use with it, what didn't you like about it and I'm curious as to why you like it for the first three weeks of flower?

 

[Eledin]

What's up @Eledin .. did a search on Citrus Acid and found your post about it, I noticed some products use citric acid (Dr Zymes) and others have it unintentionally, when using fermented oranges as an input. Of course there's tons of info out there for and against citric acid for the garden but since you have some use with it, what didn't you like about it and I'm curious as to why you like it for the first three weeks of flower?

Hello! The reason its in Dr Zymes is because it chelates minerals and also a slightly acidic ph is beneficial for faster nutrient absorption, so if you have your ph a bit on the high end it will also help. I used already chelated minerals so for me is not beneficial. Another thing I dont like about it is that is a short lived acid in the soil, meaning it wont keep your ph stable as long as other ph regulators and it can burn your roots. Of course if you burn a few roots you wont even realize it because the plants have hundreds but I had problems with prolongated use of lemons for regulating PH that were solved when I changed to a mix of nitric and phosporic acid, both are long lived in the soil and are absorved as nitrogen and phosphorus when they degrade.

The reason I like it during the first weeks of flower is because it works with big bud. If we dissect what big bud is made of is pretty much;

Composition​

1. Potassium (3%)
2. Phosphorus (1%)
3. Whey proteins
4. Ascorbic Acid
5. Citric acid
6. Amino acids
   
   4-5-6 are most likely added by adding a citrus concentrate because thats pretty much what citruses have, citric and ascorbic acid, aminoacids and vitamins. So I dont know the science behind it, I just know it works. Maybe just the citric acid by itself would do nothing though, I should have said I like big bud which has citric acid, rather.

 

[Week4Bytch]

Hello! The reason its in Dr Zymes is because it chelates minerals and also a slightly acidic ph is beneficial for faster nutrient absorption, so if you have your ph a bit on the high end it will also help. I used already chelated minerals so for me is not beneficial. Another thing I dont like about it is that is a short lived acid in the soil, meaning it wont keep your ph stable as long as other ph regulators and it can burn your roots. Of course if you burn a few roots you wont even realize it because the plants have hundreds but I had problems with prolongated use of lemons for regulating PH that were solved when I changed to a mix of nitric and phosporic acid, both are long lived in the soil and are absorved as nitrogen and phosphorus when they degrade.

The reason I like it during the first weeks of flower is because it works with big bud. If we dissect what big bud is made of is pretty much;

Composition​

1. Potassium (3%)
2. Phosphorus (1%)
3. Whey proteins
4. Ascorbic Acid
5. Citric acid
6. Amino acids
   
   4-5-6 are most likely added by adding a citrus concentrate because thats pretty much what citruses have, citric and ascorbic acid, aminoacids and vitamins. So I dont know the science behind it, I just know it works. Maybe just the citric acid by itself would do nothing though, I should have said I like big bud which has citric acid, rather.

Understood. I know little about citric acid myself, some sites swear by it and others swear at it. Guess it has its place in some scenarios.

 

[Eledin]

I should add that I do push nutrients with liquids not with ammendments, I do super soil but only so they have the base nutrition from there and then I push with liquids which come with the minerals already chelated. If youre using only ammendments the whole grow, then citric acid might be beneficial to use from time to time to chelate the minerals that are non chelated like calcium and magnessium in dolomitic lime. Most ammendments dont have chelated minerals thats why theyre also absorved slower, if you wanna make it quicker citric acid will help you by chelating part of those minerals.
But I wouldnt use it always to ph water.

 

[Eledin]

Understood. I know little about citric acid myself, some sites swear by it and others swear at it. Guess it has its place in some scenarios.

I can see why some organic growers can swear by it because of what I explained in the last post. And dont get me wrong, sometimes Im too lazy to go grab the PH down and I add a few drops of lemon, nothing wrong with that. The problem I had with citric acid is using it every time I needed to ph my water, but from time to time it shouldnt be harmful and lemon has goodies for your plant.

 

[Eledin]

Hey @Halloweed how was the smoke? The buds seemed to not be affected much, perhaps the tips of some suggar leaves, nothing you cant remove before smoking. Hopefully it was nice, they look nice.

 

[Halloweed]

Hey @Halloweed how was the smoke? The buds seemed to not be affected much, perhaps the tips of some suggar leaves, nothing you cant remove before smoking. Hopefully it was nice, they look nice.

I chopped them on Sunday. They're hanging in my grow tent. Some of them branches had some weight to them.

Sugar leaves aren't too bad. Doubt it will affect it much. Looking forward to the smoke .

Not sure how long it'll take to dry. I'm gonna try for 14 days but I can't get below 74 degrees f. The humidity is controlled for the most part...62%. The heat may speed up drying. I hung them with most leaves on for more moisture.

I usually don't weigh what i grow because it's been small but I'm gonna weigh this on. Some buds are huge.

 

[Eledin]

So glad to hear that! If they have weight is gonna be good most likely, when they have too many problems in flower the buds dont put much weight so thats for sure a good sign. 74ºF is good, mine are drying at higher temps and take about a week and a half but mostly because I hang them whole in summer because I cant control the heat and that helps a lot. In winter I chop every branch individually and remove some leaves. I think you should be fine with the drying
Let us know when you taste and weight it! Also some bud pics would be nice too if you feel like it.

 

[Eledin]

I can see why some organic growers can swear by it because of what I explained in the last post. And dont get me wrong, sometimes Im too lazy to go grab the PH down and I add a few drops of lemon, nothing wrong with that. The problem I had with citric acid is using it every time I needed to ph my water, but from time to time it shouldnt be harmful and lemon has goodies for your plant.

I thought a little bit more about this, I also use tap water so the ammount of lemon juice I had to use to ph to 6,2-6,5 is way higher than the ammount someone with RO water or less hard tap water should have to use. Perhaps my problem was caused because my tap water is very high in ph and I needed more lemon juice than other people. So maybe other people wont have that problem if their tap water is around 7-8ph or theyre using RO or distilled. My tap water is close to 9 and honestly its undrinkable, not that I ever liked tap water but this one will slowly kill you Im sure at the very least a kidney stone in the making.
In any case, Im not the only person reluctant to use citric acid as ph down, but maybe those people have very hard tap water too.

 

[Week4Bytch]

I thought a little bit more about this, I also use tap water so the ammount of lemon juice I had to use to ph to 6,2-6,5 is way higher than the ammount someone with RO water or less hard tap water should have to use. Perhaps my problem was caused because my tap water is very high in ph and I needed more lemon juice than other people. So maybe other people wont have that problem if their tap water is around 7-8ph or theyre using RO or distilled. My tap water is close to 9 and honestly its undrinkable, not that I ever liked tap water but this one will slowly kill you Im sure at the very least a kidney stone in the making.
In any case, Im not the only person reluctant to use citric acid as ph down, but maybe those people have very hard tap water too.

9 pH... Woah. I thought mine was bad at 8.2. I've been looking into citric acid and Nik from Rooted Leaf has given us a lot of info on it. (Too much almost ) I've yet to read what he's provided for us via PDF files, but will be reading up on that. But he's made a lot of interesting points about citric acid.

In a large enough pot the soil should be able to buffer the water to where it needs to be, that's 101 for us, and I personally question could it buffer water that high of a pH like ours? I don't know, not yet anyway. Not for certainty. But I'm close. (I'm currently watering my outside pots from the water hose, naked tap water). As of yet no side effects that I can tell from that. But here's something interesting, citric acid can break down scaled hard water. How that effects your plant, that's the big question. In moderation I guess it shouldn't be that big of a problem. From Nik, our plants actually make citric acid to help regulate soil right underneath them at the root system rhizosphere. But again we could burn the plants over using man made citrus acid (which is in super high concentrations) compared to what the plant puts out.

I sometimes want to pH the water so that the soil doesn't "have to work so hard" to buffer that water. And sometimes I just pour it in straight from the tap, or at least after filtering it.

If the pots are under 15g I'd probably pH the water, over that, you might not have too.

 

[Eledin]

Yes in theory with enough ph buffers people say you should be fine but I have been not, makes sense now that you gave me that info because I use 7 and 5 gal pots 90% of the grows. I dont think you will kill your plants by giving them untreated tap water because Ive done that too in the past but now I try to get rid of all the chlorides first because I focus more in trying to keep my microorganisms alive and healthy so I dont have to use great white every month because its expensive hahahaha.

About reacting with tap water, besides what I mention about chelating minerals, its true, you can use citric acid or vinegar to dissolve the carbon from the calcium and magnessium carbonate. That in theory shouldnt be bad but of course you have to consider that youre giving readily available calcium and magnessium if youre doing that by sepparating them from the carbon and then chelating them, so maybe using less calmag or none at all would be required depending on the hardness of the water.

Can you share those pdf files? If its possible, I dont think Ill be using citric acid again as ph down but I do like me some reads on weed related stuff.

 

[Week4Bytch]

Yes in theory with enough ph buffers people say you should be fine but I have been not, makes sense now that you gave me that info because I use 7 and 5 gal pots 90% of the grows. I dont think you will kill your plants by giving them untreated tap water because Ive done that too in the past but now I try to get rid of all the chlorides first because I focus more in trying to keep my microorganisms alive and healthy so I dont have to use great white every month because its expensive hahahaha.

About reacting with tap water, besides what I mention about chelating minerals, its true, you can use citric acid or vinegar to dissolve the carbon from the calcium and magnessium carbonate. That in theory shouldnt be bad but of course you have to consider that youre giving readily available calcium and magnessium if youre doing that by sepparating them from the carbon and then chelating them, so maybe using less calmag or none at all would be required depending on the hardness of the water.

Can you share those pdf files? If its possible, I dont think Ill be using citric acid again as ph down but I do like me some reads on weed related stuff.

Nik has them on my Discord, look for the rooted Leaf channel I made for him.

 

[Elvis7733]

Thanks. I will wait a week before feeding.

I was growing organic using Dr. Earth and worm casings but from here on out I'm just gonna finish with bottle nutes I guess.

I tried making a decent organic soil. I think next time I'm gonna go with purple cow or buildasoil.

I'm experiencing lockout ,I think, and I am organic so I top dressed it with guano , bone meal and coffee grounds.
Problem is, I'm feeding them every time I water them so I can't flush!
I think I would have to wait till dry and scrape the top of the dirt off,well as much as I can and then water it, let's just plain H2O.