Don't get me wrong, I like coco for its wicking properties and sustainability. But I can't keep spending so much on hydro nutes. I'm switching to organic dry amendments.

Coco/Perlite Rocks
Water just like Hydro
Get 20% run off you should be good
I like it better than hydro I can take them outside during day and get free power from above then tuck then in at night and its easier to water them out there
not as high tech as your setup lol

Dawgg said:

Coco/Perlite Rocks
Water just like Hydro
Get 20% run off you should be good
I like it better than hydro I can take them outside during day and get free power from above then tuck then in at night and its easier to water them out there
not as high tech as your setup lol

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I strive for KISS, which means “Keep it simple stupid”. I take mine outside too. Love free photons!! However, I have had insect problems introduced to my tent in the form of knats, white flies and even looper worms last spring. I dread when you get bugs because they laid eggs on your plants when you went for a beer! Lol So I found a solution which didnt work very good, heres a picbulldogs are not good for bug control, very lazy

GanjaFarmer24 said:

Don't get me wrong, I like coco for its wicking properties and sustainability. But I can't keep spending so much on hydro nutes. I'm switching to organic dry amendments.

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Well you can switch to rdwc. It's really not alot of nutrients used. I bet I get a lb for about 50 bucks in nutrients with rwdc. Now when I started it was Triple that cause I was buying small bottles and constantly dumping. Now I buy large bottles and top off. Bout to grab a microscope so I can really see what's going on. You would think organic dry weight shipped would be expensive. I pay alot in water transportation. If you just buy powdered nutrients you save so much on shipping weight. Become the chemist if you really want cut costs. My main ingredient, water.. Is my cheapest lol.

Dry salts are 100% the way to go weather you buy a premade blend (jack's, megacrop, etc) or make your own from individual salts. Literally pennies for a gallon of feed.

Jacks is very economical and very good results too!!

dbrzz said:

Jacks is very economical and very good results too!!

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I'll look into more economical nutes for the next grow. I'll figure out the cost of the current set, but I suspect it's around $100 for the crop, which I expect to be somewhere in the vicinity of two pounds of dried buds. I don't know the cost of electricity for the crop, but I suspect it may be more than the nute cost, and I have full solar on my house to help during the day.

In any case, the cost is peanuts compared to buying 2 pounds at the local dispensaries, even at the current low end of $200/oz or so.

phxazcraig said:

I'll look into more economical nutes for the next grow. I'll figure out the cost of the current set, but I suspect it's around $100 for the crop, which I expect to be somewhere in the vicinity of two pounds of dried buds. I don't know the cost of electricity for the crop, but I suspect it may be more than the nute cost, and I have full solar on my house to help during the day.

In any case, the cost is peanuts compared to buying 2 pounds at the local dispensaries, even at the current low end of $200/oz or so.

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Yeah I was messing with the SF 4000 today and measured the light output and I found that from the 80% to 100% range on the adjustment knob the difference in output is like only 1000 Lux. Setting it @ 100% just really uses more electricity. So now I’m setting it at 80 as my full strength.

phxazcraig said:

I'm dreading the stretch coming up.

I've ordered a new inline fan and controller (and humidifier as well) with a vague plan to mount the fan outside the tent so I can raise the light another 8 inches maybe, I'll have to figure out the hangars though, as they are already as high as you can go with the ratchets I have.

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Don’t forget to get some clones!

Jonjr said:

Don’t forget to get some clones!

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To be honest, never even thought of it. (Nor do I know how to.) But that would mean having to grow the same strain again, and I want to try lots of different strains. This one is Sour Diesel, but I have 5 Super Silver Haze seeds to try, and then I have my eye on growing some Alaskan Thunderfuck. (And old school classics like Acapulco Gold and Panama Red. I like the idea of doing landrace strains for a while.)

Here is an update. My growth is still pretty massive, but it has finally shifted into buds instead if height. In the nick of time, and I'm looking at ways to raise the light another inch or two. I have the light turned down enough that the edges get a PAR 500 or less, while the center goes above 1000. I'm fighting an EC spike in the runoff too.

What strain are you growing?

dbrzz said:

I strive for KISS, which means “Keep it simple stupid”. I take mine outside too. Love free photons!! However, I have had insect problems introduced to my tent in the form of knats, white flies and even looper worms last spring. I dread when you get bugs because they laid eggs on your plants when you went for a beer! Lol So I found a solution which didnt work very good, heres a picView attachment 1226015View attachment 1226015View attachment 1226018View attachment 1226020bulldogs are not good for bug control, very lazyView attachment 1226018

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Atleast your dog probably doesn't eat your plant leaves like mine does lol

dbrzz said:

What strain are you growing?

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Sour Diesel, from seed. Started germinating Jan 7, flipped to flower Feb 15.

Also don't forget about master blend 3 parts, it's cheap and works good, you can decide how you want to mix it.

Everything has slowed down, finally. Plants are at eye level, with pots and it's a real bud factory not. Buds are getting bigger, and sticky.



4 weeks since lights flipped to 12/12.

A couple of issues have arisen. One is the height of the plants. I've got about 14 inches,average, to the canopy, with several stalks sticking up 6-8 inches higher, though more around the edges of the light. I have a huge dropoff in coverage between center and edge now. I'm dealing with this by watching the plants closely for signs of overlighting, and cranking up the light. I'm measuring PAR now but trying to judge the light by observing ill effects. I'm purposely overlighting in the center in the hopes of trying to give the edges enough light to have decent buds.

Problem is - I don't really know what sort of problems to look for in very early stages of too-strong-lighting.

I'm going on the idea that perhaps the peak brightness can be spiked as long as the overall lighting on the plants (DLI?) is in a reasonable range. I have a very leafy bushy canopy that in effect uses a few top buds to shade the rest. And perhaps more important of all, each plant is centered under a corner of the light, so only the quarter of the plant growing into the middle is getting full light. Which brings up the question of whether lighting evenness versus peak value on a plant is most important. I have up to 1300 PAR in the center now, and 400-500 at the edges, if you point the sensor toward the light instead of straight up. One level of leaves down in the corner drops PAR to about 150, but with the stretch that happened, there is a lot of light filtering past the first set of leaves into the canopy.

The second issue I'm seeing is a troubling increase in EC on runoff. To me it just isn't making sense. The numbers don't add up. I'm putting in EC 1200 and getting out EC 1800 with more than 50% runoff on 5x daily waterings. I've reduced the watering volume by 15% to save on the ridiculous amount of nutes I was pushing through. (6-7 gallons in per day, 5 gallons runoff with EC more than 400 points higher than input.)

I cannot figure out the means by which EC is rising that much. I could see it going way up in the coco due to excessive evaporation - but not with over 50% runoff. It's as if the plants or the media are releasing extra nutrients into the runoff. I haven't tried a real 'flush', though a couple of times I've just run 7 gallons or so at once through the plants. When I do that (extra input volume) my EC does drop, but immediately starts to build back up.

If I'm judging this correctly, EC is building up somehow in the pots, and the runoff EC may be a better predictor of what the roots are seeing than the input EC. As such, I want to keep the runoff EC below 2000 or so, by whatever means.

Possibly interelated is an incident that happened last night in the reservoir. Normally the reservoir is quite stable at 6.0 with the Bluelab controller pumping pH Down as needed. Last night I noticed it had dropped to 5.7. Very unusual. I noticed a lot of 'scum' in the water, mostly I think left over from when I was using Fox Farms Big Bloom. Might have been some sort of algae, though the bucket is so dark I couldn't really judge it. But I had not emptied and cleaned the reservoir for a month. I had simply dumped in new nutes every 2-3 days. And a couple of weeks ago I stopped adding H2O2 into the mix as I wasn't sure I needed it. Today I emptied the last 3 gallons of the reservoir by pumping through the plants. EC dropped from 1900 to 1700 (1200 input). I then emptied and cleaned the reservoir thoroughly using a washrag and strong H2O2 solution. I also cleaned the wires, tubes, pump and probes sitting in the reservoir. They were all pretty gunky.

Finally I mixed up a new batch of nutes, but deliberately underdoes them, plus added some RO water at the end to dilute EC further. Result is I now have an Input EC of 1080, with (currently) an output EC of around 1650. My guess is that the roots are seeing values around 1650 or a bit more, but are happy in that range. I'm judging that by looking for tip burn.

Buds are growing, growing, growing. The ones in the brightest lighting have stigmas that look dried up compared to a lot of others than look fresh and new. I don't know how to judge bud formation for issues yet. The smell has really picked up in the last week, and it is that typical sweet smell - haven't noticed any other terpenes yet. The buds are sticky, and some of the leaves too.

Interestingly, while these plants seemed very indica at first, with wide leaves and squat growth, they look very sativa now. The fan leaves are dramatically narrower near the top of the canopy, and they let a lot of light filter through to the next level below. Buds extend down 18 inches from the top growth. Certainly the ones in the center are getting fatter - but again I don't know what to expect other than I think they will be bigger buds than I've ever grown in the past.

Oh - flowering started 5 weeks ago tomorrow. Other than some preliminary stretching, nothing happened in the first two weeks. All the bud formation got there in the last 3 weeks.

Next question to figure out will be what stage of the flowering process I am. I've read numerous times that Sour Diesel wants an 11 week flower instead of an 8 week flower. That means I'm either looking at 3 weeks of bloom left or 6. I need to adjust my nutes to 'late bloom' at some point, then basically a flush. But I don't know how many weeks I have left with these plants.

You still havent tried increasing the number of waterings per day??

jguit said:

You still havent tried increasing the number of waterings per day??

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I'm at 5x now, and adding a bunch more water per event didn't do much. I lack a schedule to use for 6x, though that's just a bump, not a roadblock. I'm just trying a lower EC now. A number of people have mentioned EC's down in the 1.0 (1000-1100) area, which is about where I am now.

Sure wish I could figure out how the EC is going up so much in spite of all the watering.

If I saw the slightest hint that the plants were suffering from too much or too few nutrients, I'd try something else. During the day, they get watered every 3.5 hours. Adding one more feeding wouldn't change that much. I think if I fiddle here, I'll just double to 10x daily and reduce volume accordingly. Hate to screw up this close to the finishing line, trying to push for an extra ounce of yield.

There is one variable I haven't accounted for, and that is the air flow. About the time (but not before) EC started rising I was also fighting RH issues. I added a powered duct fan and left if on 24x7. Really balloons the tent walls too. I have a meter at the base of the pots near the incoming airflow, and it shows remarkably stable conditions. 40-45% RH, 69-74F temps over past 24 hours, and that is typical. RH values peak at 53% but are now often 48-50% when the main fan runs. Temps just above canopy are 79-80F. I'm putting a lot of air through there, and I don't know how much it dries out the pots. (Not much, I still have lots of runoff.) I've thought about doing stuff like wrapping the pots loosely with tin foil to slow evaporation through all those side holes.

EC-1.0 is only 500 ppm