Arizona - Shed + Tent & Outdoor Growing Journal

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ritoMox

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20 yrs in Phx. Blazing heat! Casa Grande not as bad, but still hot. Thanks for the great thread👍
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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Great thread
👍
Expensive grow in that AZ heat!
It can be if you're using AC. Electric bills get crazy in the summer. Those swamp coolers only use a tiny bit of energy, however. The trade off is less fine control and a bit higher temperature range (80s rather than 60s-70s).
 
R

ritoMox

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It can be if you're using AC. Electric bills get crazy in the summer. Those swamp coolers only use a tiny bit of energy, however. The trade off is less fine control and a bit higher temperature range (80s rather than 60s-70s).
Found some great patents on swamp coolers that blow away what's on the market now. That's probably why they are not on the market!
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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Found some great patents on swamp coolers that blow away what's on the market now. That's probably why they are not on the market!
The absolute max you can do with single stage evaporative cooling is a 40°f temperature drop from ambient.

As humidity rises, this max temp drop decreases. On a 70% humidity day, you'll get maybe a 10°-15° drop...

With some 'Rube Goldberging', you might be able to dehumidify the cooled air and run it through additional evaporative stages, but as temperatures drop there's a diminishing return on cooling ability. You're looking at just a tiny bit more cooling power with a HUGE hit to CFM.
 
R

ritoMox

700
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The absolute max you can do with single stage evaporative cooling is a 40°f temperature drop from ambient.

As humidity rises, this max temp drop decreases. On a 70% humidity day, you'll get maybe a 10°-15° drop...

With some 'Rube Goldberging', you might be able to dehumidify the cooled air and run it through additional evaporative stages, but as temperatures drop there's a diminishing return on cooling ability. You're looking at just a tiny bit more cooling power with a HUGE hit to CFM.
In the first link, the inventor claims that the water gets down to 33F. That's cold enough for a nice indirect cooler.
 
Evaporative cooler
R

ritoMox

700
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Ambient temps are obviously very important. Unfortunately, that patent doesn't specify. I studied both patents and they really focus on operation in high humidity areas. High humidity is not really an issue in Casa Grande, except maybe during monsoon season. If your into DIY, you might consider a solar powered desiccant based system for making ice and using the ice for indirect cooling. This one is Ammonia/Water: Solar Ice Maker Chills with Heat
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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So, the 2 looking limee are starting to green up again (ignore the other stuff, that's clone stress damage).

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I'm going to do some defoliation as well. It's gonna get crowded in here:

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MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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Before defoliation:

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After:
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I took all leaves growing inwards, any big upper leaves blocking lower bud sites, leaves & tiny branches that aren't in the canopy zone, and anything with lingering cloning damage:
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I try to leave bigger leaves on the backsides of the plants and at the bottom of the canopy zone:
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Feels alot less crowded in there now. :-D
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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Looks like they are improving:
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I gave everyone another 20 oz of the nutrient mix (60 oz total, almost 1/2 gal).. and dropped the pH to ~6.6

The plants I have outside are doing well. We've had great outdoor weather, with a 107°f day in there. The plants are doing just fine with the heat. On a hot day during the heat of the day, I'll mist them a bit and cool off their pots.

I'll get some pictures up soon.
 
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MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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As promised, pictures! Here's the outdoor crop:

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Considering we've been getting some 100°+ days, they are looking awesome!
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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Watched some Kyle Kushman vids and did a bit of super-cropping & Kushman Chiropracy.. and the canopy is looking... decent:
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That will be the last of any major stressful manipulations... now it will just be removing and 'suckers' and periodic fan-leaf removal.

And yes, those are flowers forming!
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MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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Feedin Time!!

This week I'm mixing up a 4 gallon batch, and then I'll be adding 2 more gallons of RO water to dilute it. My ppm/ec meter arrives on Wednesday, but I should be ok without it for a bit longer.

I am also adding in some calmag.
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General Hydro's Basic "Medium Feed" schedual: https://generalhydroponics.com/wp-c...Series_FeedCharts_USD_02_GrowthStageBasic.pdf


Week #2 of Flower, for 4 gallons:
CalMag: 4 × 6 = 24 ml (6 gal dose)
Micro: 6.1 × 4 = 24.4 ml
Gro: 5.3 × 4 = 21.2 ml
Bloom: 6.8 × 4 = 27.2 ml

pH @ 6.35
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They each got 20 oz of food tonight, and I'll be feeding them each a total of 60 oz, spaced out at each watering until the 6 gal is gone.
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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The Outsiders are doing good:

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We've been getting lots of rain, however, and they have been a tad bit overwatered. This was making the roots a bit slow to fully permeate the bigger pots... but they're now fully potted and should start bushing up.

We've had some heat spikes in the afternoons on a few days (104°-109°) which caused some minor heat stress, but that is expected:
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It is important to mist the plants, their pots and the area I'm growing them in when the heat spikes. This keeps the roots cool, which is the priority. If the heat held all day (like most mid summer days here), I'd need to put up shade screens (or grow under a paloverdie canopy - which is better because you can wet the canopy of the tree and massively cool & humidify the area beneath it).

Another note about AZ heat... it makes diagnostics hard. If a leaf yellows from overwatering or gets weak from something else, in this heat, you may never see it yellow or show symptoms... they'll die and shrivel in less than an hour.
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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I had mentioned I'd used some of Kyle Kushman's techniques on the tent crop (specifically the stalk bending to sculpt the plant, but I had started with the Outsiders first:
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Most of it went well:
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This one was overdone and broke a bit, but lived:
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And these 2 branches were underdone, and stood back up a bit too much:

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I'd also snapped a branch off as well... but I got the practice I needed to sculpt the tent crop decently.
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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Got my TDS meter today. Tested the mix I've been feeding my plants, 634 ppm... and all but one plant are doing good. At this point I'm thinking it's nutrient locked. Which, in hindsight, I should have deduced because nutrient deficiency doesn't start presenting with this foxfarm mix untill around 30-45 days into flower.


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Why just this one plant? It had the least developed roots at transplant to this pot, and this lead to a bit of overwatering causing slower root development on top of this. From there, the plant didn't use up the soil nutrients, got fed too much... and locked. This was the cause of the yellowing (which I was a bit worried about generally due to not having a TDS meter).

During this feeding cycle, I have not fed this plant, and it has been slow to use up water, however tonight it was time to water it....

The initial ppm of the runoff was ~1330.

I flushed it with RO water (pH 6.4) till ppms read ~600.

Now... it's just time to wait and hopefully it recovers before too much damage happens to the fan leaves.

It's probably gonna be the runt... but it should still yeild some decent nuggets.
 
MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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So... 24 hours later and there's definitely improvement.

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### 12 Hours:

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### 24 Hours:

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MacroLogos

MacroLogos

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The Outsiders are definitely flowering now:

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It looks like Aug 1st was a tad too soon, Aug 15 is about the right amount of light/dark when including dusk/dawn in total hours of daylight).

I'll give a better update tonight. (I overslept today and only had time to do a quick watering before lightsout.)
 

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