Blue Dream In Hempy Buckets With Modified Light Schedule

[Tead]

I started to look to see if there was a pH down that 'held' longer

I don't think it's an issue with the PH down 'wearing out', rather I feel the blame should be pointed towards the nutrients.
Of course, that's just my belief.... if you discover otherwise, shout it from the mountaintop brother.

Could you please tell me how often you dump your Hempy reservoirs?

I don't normally dump them unless I think something bad is going on down there.... and I only see those problems when I've failed to properly block light from getting in there. Grew in a thin white bucket once..... once. It died as soon as it hit the bloom room. Your black (painted black?) 5gals look perfect.

but now that I'm in Hempys it's a strange, new world.

Welcome to the hempy world. There are plenty around that grow hempy style and you'll get lots of 'words of wisdom' here.
Of course, we're not shy of taking silly detours at any given point either.

 

[Mars Hydro]

 

[Gorgar]

If you start at 5.8 you're at the very edge of uptake for a couple of the nutrients and your PH is going to naturally drift up. 5.5 puts you at a better place for those 2 nutrients and the PH drift up brings you into the sweet spot for all the others.

I suggest you test this and see the drift for yourself by mixing up a batch of nutes and monitoring it's PH for a few days.

Make sense?

Yes, it made so much sense that I tried it. I pHed to 5.5 and the next day it was up to 6.7. So I adjusted again and a day later it was up to 6.8.

I think that I have more at play here than just the rising pH being attributable to the nutes and maybe it's primarily due to my tap water. Maybe the chloramine since I'm using city water.

When I was growing in coco it was more of a drain to waste system and I was watering every day...so the bad pH mix was constantly being replaced by a fresh mix with the proper pH. With the Hempys, I've now got a reservoir sitting under my plants that is constantly wicking up. For the past couple of days I've been dumping the reservoir and things have been running like a regular coco grow and things are looking better. But that kinda defeats the purpose.

So today I picked up a couple of gallons of distilled water and will use that to help diagnose the problem. I've got a nute batch sitting now and will check the pH tomorrow to see if the rising pH is due to my tap water. If that works, I think that I have 4 options:

1) Drill holes in the bottom of the bucket and revert to a traditional coco grow. Maybe.
2) Keep buying distilled water...or something like it. Probably not.
3) Get an RO system. No.
4) Buy some sort of counter top cartridge filter that is capable of removing chloramine. Maybe/Probably.

Any and all other ideas are welcome. But at least for now the plants look better.

 

[Tead]

Ya know... every drop of water I use, and every drop I tested my drift with, has set at least 48hrs to off-gas things like chlorine.
Seems like a possible 5th option on your list.

I only use about 4gals for my watering duties. I always have a full 5gal bucket of water setting and feed my working 5gal bucket after the setting water has aged 48hrs.

 

[Gorgar]

Ya know... every drop of water I use, and every drop I tested my drift with, has set at least 48hrs to off-gas things like chlorine.
Seems like a possible 5th option on your list.

Yea, that's why I let it go for two days worth of checking. If I had chlorine in my water I think that it would work or I could aerate with an aquarium pump. But from looking around, chloramine is a chlorine and ammonia type compound used in some large water treatment plants that does not dissipate (at least as readily) as chlorine.

There are some 'additives' that aquarium owners, home brewers and maybe pool owners use to break down the chloramine into chlorine and ammonia, but it looks like they leave some residual harmless 'chemicals' in the water. I'm just not sure how those residual chemicals would be handled by the plants.

My Hempys are only 2 gallons each so I'm really not using/needing a lot of water, but I really don't want to be paying for and lugging a couple of gallons of water a week. Right now I'm just kickin' things around.

 

[Gorgar]

BTW, I really don't know if the pH issue is due to chloramine or not. It's just the first thing that jumped out at me. The only other thing that comes to mind is that I'm using the Canna nutes that are specific for coco (Canna Coco), but I can't rationalize how that would make a difference.

The distilled water mix should help figure this out and whether chloramine might be the culprit. I did read an article on home brewing that said that boiling chloramine for an hour or two should get rid of it, mostly for taste reasons. In the long run, this is worth investigating for any of my future grows.

 

[Mars Hydro]

Happy growing.

 

[Tead]

I wonder if the nute are designed to do this to work with the coco better somehow?
I'm really reaching there.... I know nothing about coco.

 

[mouser]

The plants are looking sweet. BD was part of my first grow (50/50 coco/perlite) and it basically laughed at all my 1st grow issues. I simply could NOT overfeed that sucker. Im pretty sure I was hitting 2100ppm before I saw burned tips. Toward the end I had to mix a special batch just for her since the rest of the grow were light weights. Heirloom has an outdoor grow going as well and seems to be having the same issues of not being able to shovel enough N into her.

You are right about the smoke though. Smooth and a pleasant high. Still have some beans and I may do an all BD grow as soon as I provide some decent meds for my neice (epilepsy) The BD helps with post seizure pain and counters the btch factor of the zonegran, but it doesnt seem to lessen the frequency of the seizures...looking at a high CBD strain to maybe help with that.

Havent tried a hempy, I'll be watching closely.

 

[joemagic3]

Does anybody have a good source for Cree cbx LEDs in the uk cheers


Sent from my iPhone using 420

 

[Billyjack]

As a fellow hempy grower, Tead suggested I stop by. I subbed this grow. Your plants look great. My grow is a bit different, I use Dr. Earth dry fertilizer, I check runoff for PH and PPM and throw it out. I will be setting up a pump so I can recirculate the runoff and setup a timer to water for when I am out of town

As far as the PH, I do not get why my runoff (or yours) gets so high (7.2 if I do not do anything) but I use Epsoma soil acidifier. This was a suggestion from Neil at Grow Pot Cheaply, I sprinkle a bit on top of the coco and check runoff over the net couple of days while it works it way through the coco. I cannot seem to PH my feeding water to a level that gets my runoff where it needs to be. I forget what I am using but it is supposed to be PH stabalized coco. I rinsed it MANY, MANY times before using it but I still have high PH runoff if I do not use the Epsoma.

 

[Gorgar]

Does anybody have a good source for Cree cbx LEDs in the uk cheers

I built my own as detailed in this thread:

DIY LEDs

It is based on the instructions provided by growmau5 and the videos are embedded in there. The cheapest place I could find the COBs was on Alibaba (China) and growmau5 gives the source in one of his videos (Kingbrite Jerry). The shipping costs are high, but if you buy enough COBs it will more than offset. I got the drivers there too.

 

[Gorgar]

I wonder if the nute are designed to do this to work with the coco better somehow?
I'm really reaching there.... I know nothing about coco.

Thanks Tead, I'm wondering the same thing. I'll check my distilled water mix later (post 24 hrs) and see where we're at.

 

[Gorgar]

As far as the PH, I do not get why my runoff (or yours) gets so high (7.2 if I do not do anything) but I use Epsoma soil acidifier. This was a suggestion from Neil at Grow Pot Cheaply, I sprinkle a bit on top of the coco and check runoff over the net couple of days while it works it way through the coco. I cannot seem to PH my feeding water to a level that gets my runoff where it needs to be. I forget what I am using but it is supposed to be PH stabalized coco. I rinsed it MANY, MANY times before using it but I still have high PH runoff if I do not use the Epsoma.

Thanks for the suggestion Billyjack. Are you happy with the way the Epsoma is working. I think that I bought a bag of that...or something like that...last year for my wife. I'll look around later and see if there's any left.

 

[Billyjack]

I am happy with it. It seems to do the job. I start with half the suggested amount, wait a couple of waterings and just check runoff. As long as my plants are green and growing well, I do not get aggressive with lowering the PH, slow and steady.

 

[Gorgar]

Well, everything that I thought and said about tap water and chloramine is apparently wrong...so the only other thing left is the Canna Coco nutes themselves. The nute mix in the distilled water raised the pH the same as it did in tap water, 6.9. For now I'll try Billyjack's idea of using the soil acidifier since I found it in the garage. The plants have just been fed with it applied as a top dressing after adjusting the pH down to 5.5.

I'll give that a couple of days to see if it works. In the meantime, I'll be investigating other fertilizers. The Canna did great in a straight coco grow but it looks like I need to find something better suited for a Hempy. This is turning out to be more of an experiment than I had hoped.

 

[Tead]

[QUOTE This is turning out to be more of an experiment than I had hoped. ][/QUOTE]

There's much to be said for a nice stable grow system/process that works repeatedly... unfortunately, one rarely starts in that configuration and finds themselves traveling the same path as yourself. It's a well worn path with many helpful signs along the way.

 

[Gorgar]

The plants are looking sweet. BD was part of my first grow (50/50 coco/perlite) and it basically laughed at all my 1st grow issues.

Yea, I hear you mouser. The BD (last grow in coco) was a real joy to grow. It just looked sooo healthy the whole time. My first grow was a Super Silver Haze and it was a bitch and I was told that I should have looked for something easier to grow for a first try.

The last pictures that I posted look pretty good from that distance, but the new growth (shoots after topping) were showing problems. One plant looks like it has recovered fairly well after I've been dumping the reservoirs daily but the other one's growth is stunted. I pruned a little today to open it up some more to see if that helps. I'll give it another day or two and then maybe flush it if it looks like it needs it.

 

[Gorgar]

There's much to be said for a nice stable grow system/process that works repeatedly... unfortunately, one rarely starts in that configuration and finds themselves traveling the same path as yourself. It's a well worn path with many helpful signs along the way.

Yea, absolutely agree. In fact, I don't mind a little experimentation and whatever I find out might help someone else down the line. I'm thankful that I have a couple of you guys looking over my shoulder along the way.

I'm working on another plan of attack right now.

 

[Gorgar]

Well, I have not done this much pH testing since I worked in a water quality lab in the late seventies! Anyways, I found that it is normal for a pH rise when feeding due to ionic exchange and this actually signals a healthy uptake of nutes. However, I could not find any reason why there was a pH rise of a mixed nute solution prior to feeding. So the focus was to see if a stable pH could be maintained with the mixed nute solution that I'm using.

My original veg nutes were Canna Coco A&B (base nutes), Rhizotonic, Cannazym and General Organics CaMg. After approximately 24 hrs the pH would rise from about 5.5 (set points were all from 5.5-5.6) to 6.8 or so. My last grow in straight coco went well with the base nutes at around 3/4 of the Canna feed chart so I continued that. I wanted to see if I could isolate the pH rise to just the base nutes so I mixed the A&B and after a couple of hours would see the pH creep up and ended at around 6.2 after 24 hours so it seemed like this might work if I used the base nutes only and no supplements. I don't know what would have happened after 24 hrs.

I remembered all of the hype regarding Advanced Nutrients and their 'pH Perfect' technology when I was researching nutes a while ago, but did not really buy into it. But I was getting desperate and thought that it was worth the investment in their base grow nutes so I picked up the Sensi Grow A&B. I'll also give AN some bonus points because they responded to my email in a couple of hours which is good on its own...but I emailed them on Labor Day.

I started with a 50% dose of the AN base nutes and a couple of hours later the pH again was creeping up and after about 24 hours the pH was a little better than the Canna base nute solution, but not by much. So I said eff it, and hoped that if I increased the dosage (3/4) there would maybe be a stronger buffering effect and then added the supplemental nutes at a slightly lower dose. I started at 5.6 and after about 6 hours there was no pH rise so I crossed my fingers and checked the pH this morning (post 24 hrs). The pH rose to between 5.7 and 5.8 (meter fluctuated) so at this point there seems to be some hope. So this is where I'll be picking up and if it works out I'll probably get some more of the AN nutes. I can't say that the AN nutes are 'pH Perfect' but they may be 'pH Pretty Good'.

In the mean time, the plants were given a light flush yesterday until the effluent pH was down to around 6.2. I was running short on time when I did that, otherwise I would have dumped more pHed water through them.

The plants have been looking a little better lately, particularly the new growth, most likely due to the daily dumping of the Hempy reservoirs and the replenishment of a better pH solution. So right now I'm just going to let them drink the plain, pHed water for a couple of days before they resume getting any more nutes.