Halloweed said:

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.

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LoveGrowingIt said:

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.

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Galgrows said:

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.

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Eledin said:

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...

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Week4Bytch said:

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?

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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.

Eledin said:

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.

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Week4Bytch said:

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.

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Eledin said:

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.

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Eledin said:

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.

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Eledin said:

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.

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Eledin said:

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.

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Halloweed said:

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.

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