2blgl's First Grow Afghani Kush - Skunk & Northern Light - Big Bud

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Well spent last night breaking down my Res cleaning and sterilizing it. Made 10 Gal of RO water and adjusted the PH down to 5.5. Also took the time to re-work some of the hoses and put a little laptop table inside the cabinet so that the water chiller and the humidifier sit better and inside the cabinet. Now I can close the doors again was having to leave them open. The hydroguard arrived today and added 8 ml to the res, bottle calls for 2ml for each gal and I run 4.5 gal in the res.

The Afghni Kush x Skunk and roots

The New Northern Ligh x Big Bud and roots

 

[Greenthumb J]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

the AK x skunk definitely needs the hydroguard.. I would add more than that.. Aquashields suggested dose was 5ml-15ml per gallon.


adding more cant hurt your plants, and by looking at the roots of your AKxSkunk, it needs an aggressive application.

Pick up some sort of beneficial bacteria.. Subculture-M or Great White, and you wont need to clean and sterilize your reservoir. Thats how bad bacteria get in and cause havoc on your roots. IF theres no good bacteria to fight the bad, then your plants will fall victim to root rot in no time!


PS.. PH isn't a verb, you cant "PH" your water. You adjust the level, or balance it. Silly stoners making others think the wrong things! I want you to be educated my friend! The more you know the better cause knowing is half the battle!!

It's like saying i flipped my plants today. What the hell is that? they did backflips? you sold them for more than you paid? NO! you changed the light schedule from 12 hours on 12 hours off.. does weed make you lazy? haha sorry, but it just sounds silly when we dont use the proper terminology. Rant over!!

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Thanks Greenthumb, the bottle actually said 2ml per gal but the web site says 5-10 ml/Gal so I will add some more tomorrow. Also I edited my post to correct my poor English,

 

[Greenthumb J]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Hey, you can spell, you know how to use punctuation properly.. i'd say your english is great!! I guess i'm just a stickler for the small things!

Lady GT and i had a wicked laugh about this when i was talking about my water needing to be "ph'd" i kept pronouncing the PH like you would in the english language (like an F) so i was going off about how my wated needed to be F'd. she smoked about 4 bags to her dome of our new vaporizer and couldn't stop laughing for a solid 5 mins. Good times!

Very strange the bottle says 2ml per gallon and then the Website states the correct usage. The range from 5-10ml is to give a mild or aggressive dose depending on your needs. On the bottle of Aquashield (which is what Hydroguard used to be called) states a dosage of 5-15ml per gallon of water. Like i mentioned before, this stuff cant hurt your plants, so i would always go with the max suggested dose

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Added 40ml of Hydroguard to the res today, that along with the 8ml from yesterday puts it at just under 10ml per gal. Have some Subculture-M and more Hydroguard on order.

That is funny your water needing to be F'ed Greenthumb. I'm married to an Aussie and we have loads of fun comparing the Kings English vs my yank English.

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Checked plants tonight. Root's are not slimey though they are brownish, as in light brown. That could be the cannazym as it is a light brown and i noticed it made the water a brown color. I am going to run plain RO water and hydroguard for one more day and change the res tomorrow night adding 1/3 nute strength using the recipe for success feeding schedule and hydroguard. I have also ordered Plant Success ORCA Liquid Mycorrhizal Inoculate instead of more hydroguard and the Subculture-M, it is made by the makers of Great White but contains Bacillus amyloliquefaciens the active ingredient in Hydroguard and most everything that great white contains, and it is made for hydro. I also wrapped the water cooler 1/2" hoses in black electrical tape to keep light out.

Question on PH I will always start out with my water at 5.5 but I dont want to use buffers to much so what would be a good rule of thumb for when I should adjust it while in the reservoir should I just stick to changeing the water out once a week starting at 5.5 and let it do what it's gonna do?

 

[stealthgrow]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Checked plants tonight. Root's are not slimey though they are brownish, as in light brown. That could be the cannazym as it is a light brown and i noticed it made the water a brown color. I am going to run plain RO water and hydroguard for one more day and change the res tomorrow night adding 1/3 nute strength using the recipe for success feeding schedule and hydroguard. I have also ordered Plant Success ORCA Liquid Mycorrhizal Inoculate instead of more hydroguard and the Subculture-M, it is made by the makers of Great White but contains Bacillus amyloliquefaciens the active ingredient in Hydroguard and most everything that great white contains, and it is made for hydro. I also wrapped the water cooler 1/2" hoses in black electrical tape to keep light out.

Question on PH I will always start out with my water at 5.5 but I dont want to use buffers to much so what would be a good rule of thumb for when I should adjust it while in the reservoir should I just stick to changeing the water out once a week starting at 5.5 and let it do what it's gonna do?

The area you want to keep you reservoir PH at is between 5.5 and 6.5.
If you setting your PH to 5.5 your not leaving yourself much wiggle room with PH fluctuation, and also some nutrients are only absorbed at certain ph lvl's. I usually set my PH between 5.8 and 6.0 when I change my reservoir. This allows the PH to fluctuate a little throughout the week until the next reservoir change, and also allows the plants to absorb all the range of nutrients your feeding it.
There is a nice chart I've seen here on the site, I'll have to find it and post it for you.
Cheers.

 

[stealthgrow]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Here is the Nutrient availability chart

 

[Greenthumb J]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

I would keep ordering Hydroguard 2B.

That stuff is really all you need in order to maintain a healthy reservoir.

Stealth mentioned the correct range of PH of 5.5-6.5. 6.5 is actually a little high.. a more suitable max PH you should hit would be around 6.2 as you will experience lockouts of Potassium, Calcium, Manganese Iron And Boron with a pH level of anything higher.

For your PH, theres always PH up and Down which contain buffers to maintain the PH level. or vinegar or citric acid to lower or baking soda to raise your PH as well.

If you want to use something thats actually beneficial to your plants, purchase some Gen Hydro's FloraBlend to lower PH or Gen Hydro's ArmorSi to raise PH. Florablend is a vegan plant booster and ArmorSi is a silica supplement. both great stuff! Florablend is actually recommended during seed germination to!

PH

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Thanks guy's for watching and giving advice, dont know what I would do otherwise, well yes I do have a mess on my hands..... Stelth, I must have looked at that chart 10 times but somehow got the number 5.5 stuck in my head thanks for showing it to me again.

anyway, changed the res tonight going from the flush to a veg feed routine now. Roots are looking better. I followed the technaflora veg recipe but at 1/3 strength and added hydroguard. My RO water is usually about 7 to 7.3 PH but after adding the nutrients the PH was 6.0 so I left it there. I also adjusted my water cooler to have the water at 57 because I read a good article about hydro water and air and it stated that 57 is the optimum temp to hold the most dissolved air. They actually havent been feed any nutrients since they were sprouted except for one tank with Technaflora Root66 and SugarDaddy so I am pretty sure they are starving.

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Hello everyone,
tonight's update. They are getting healthy and growing. hydroguard is some good stuff thats for sure. My Orca came in tonight and added 15ml to the res bottle states 5ml for every 10Gal but you can use up to 3x the recommended dose because i want to get the roots a real good dose. These two girls sure have suffered because of my inexperience but they are not dead yet and actually growing.

Pictures from yesterday leaves starting to perk up but still pretty droopy

Today, looking much better

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Hello
Checked the plants tonight. Roots are about 90% pure white now. Leaves standing up nice and proud. the AKxS is 3" tall now and the New Northern is 2" tall but the leaves are growing out nicely. PH is slowly rising but by 0.1 or 0.2 points while the PPM is slowly going down each day. The AHxS has some damaged leaves from all my noobie issues and has a slight yellowing to the second to newest leaves but the top most newest leaves look a proper green.

 

[Greenthumb J]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Hydroguard alone is some good stuff.. If you can get Plant Success products, i would suggest Great White. very diverse species of bacteria

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Hydroguard alone is some good stuff.. If you can get Plant Success products, i would suggest Great White. very diverse species of bacteria

I am also using Plant Success Orca which is a form of Great White but made for hydro and is already in liquid form.

 

[Greenthumb J]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

If you want to get the most efficiency from your mycorrhizal product (I still suggest a powdered mycorrhizae) then you want to brew it in a beneficial tea and apply it at the base of the stalk and let it run down into the root zone. Nutrients, especially synthetic fertilizers can actually kill off your mycorrhizal before they get to activate in your reservoir.

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Hello all,

The AKxS recovering well from my earlier neglect and got to over 4" tall at the V between the leaves and the stem I can see new growth and the top continues to get more sets of leaves. Been reading on LST methods and decide I want to force the girls to grow sideways across the length of the res hoping the branches that would be lower on the stem instead get light and grow up. Please let me know if I am on the right track. The New Northern is getting wider but only slowly growing taller.

The AKxS

The New Northern

 

[indica vet]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

they would come up nice "espaliered"

 

[Greenthumb J]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Build a scrog and do the same thing. You want to produce an even canopy so that the plant can absorb the light more efficiently and photosynthesize at a quicker rate. By topping your plant and the use of a scrog, you force the plant to grow outwards, which will in turn increase your yield as you increase the amount of potential bud sites.

 

[2BLgL]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

Original plan was a traditional scrog but in building my res I put the holes for the pots to far on the outer edge, so I have to get each plant closer to the center of the res to keep them in the light. Question on topping, when you top does the plant stop growing up from the top and instead start growing out from the sides?

 

[Greenthumb J]

re: 2blgl's First Grow Afghni Kush/Skunk and Northern Light/Big Bud

>>> Original plan was a traditional scrog but in building my res I put the holes for the pots to far on the outer edge, so I have to get each plant closer to the center of the res to keep them in the light

Stick to the original plan. Your plants are going to bush out regardless, raising your light will increase the light footprint, giving you more space to grow in. The wider the canopy, the more light your plant absorbs.

>>> when you top does the plant stop growing up from the top and instead start growing out from the sides?

Answer: No, it does not stop growing upwards. A hormone called "auxins" are plentiful at the TOP of every plant. This is what causes a tree or plant to grow straight up. When we top it, not only do we cause it to create two tops, but we also distribute those auxins more evenly to other tops, which then create a more even canopy by allowing the lower branches to grow at a quicker rate due to higher levels of auxins.

If you are going to top your plant, you will want to use a traditional scrog.