ColoradoGriz's First Grow - LED - Soil - Bag Seed

[ColoradoGriz]

Very nice Griz!! I was thinking of grabbing 2 of those 144x5 units for my 3x3. Like what I am seeing so far. Tagging along for the ride. Peace!!

Thanks Shaggn! Honestly, my experience with any lights, growing for that matter, is all new. I couldn't tell you if these reflectors are better or worse than anything out there.

That being said, I have seen plenty of grows and I feel that my plants are doing great under these lights. They do not create so much heat that my soil dries out too fast and I get very little stretch. I tied the girls down again last night and even the lower canopy growth, hidden below a foot of heavy growth was lush and green. I do not really defoil, if I see browning leaves I give them a light pull and if they come off, they come off. I used to tuck so more light can get through but with these lights I quit doing that as plenty of light gets through. I love the footprint as well, I could easily cover a 6x6 so in a 5x5 there is no bad spot. Lastly, I feel I benefit off of three panels over one stronger one because light is coming from more angles so I have practically no shadows in my tent.

 

[ColoradoGriz]

Hey bro, things are looking great! Glad the Lucy is doing so well. I'm having issues with mine under the LED. Might be time for me to go back to hps

Someday I will have to try an HPS grow.

One more Goo Chee and another SSA are starting to root. I was going to pot them but I was exhausted after cleaning up, tying down and juicing the flower tent. I did water the Veg tent. Dude, that whole Veg tent is purely tap water and soil and so far none of them are bitching about it. Since they are clones I am thinking about seeing how they compare (just tap water(no PHing) FFOF soil, some Mycorrhizae every few weeks along with CalMg) to the ones now being juiced up on the Fox Farm Bottled Ferts.

 

[UncleCannabis]

Thanks Uncle C! Double thanks because looking at your grow journal I think I have confirmed WTF "Fruit Stomper" Strain is. The two girls that I have identified as the Fruit Stomper bag seed, that came from Maggie's Farm, share a lot of traits as your Fruity Juice Strain. The dark green color, broad leaves, tight node spacing. I'm beginning to think Maggie's Farm crossed a Fruity Juice with Grape Stomper. I have no idea why, Fruity Juice is a damn near perfect strain in itself.

Fruity Juice x Grape Stomper does sound like it would make for a good pairing. I'm interested to see how your girls turn out. Your whole garden is looking superb!

 

[Pigeons420]

Hi Griz

 

[ColoradoGriz]

Hi Griz

Hi Buddy


Was that because I was silently stalking your posts?

 

[Pigeons420]

Hahaha nooooo

Just happened to see you walking past the garden and I thought I'd say hello.

 

[ColoradoGriz]

Lack of updates have been due to some foolishness on my part. So much bad information out there or not enough information. From the beginning I was very anal about my PH. Then my meter went on the fritz and bad information told me not to worry about PH.

PH matters.

In my case, my tap runs 8.4. Yes, if I add my line of nutes and supplements along with some CaMg my PH drops to @ 6.1 - 6.3. My soil runs at 6.8. Now if I'm feeding with nutes, no problem, I don't need to check PH. I've checked my PH as I've added nutes and the outcome is the same.

But......if it's just water I'm giving them, it's a damn 8.4 to a soil that's 6.8 bringing my soil to a mid to high 7. Yes it's true, that fudge's a lot of crap up.

Foxy- I don't know what happened with foxy, somewhere in Veg things went wrong and she never recovered. She fell out of her pot, she showed her sex in Veg week 3. She shows signs of stress, her leave development is dwarfed, lots of browning. I flushed her and gave her PH water and some CaMG. Soil is at a 6.7 PH but she looks bad. I will let her finish out, why not.

Betty - She shows issues also but not extreme. The weaker of the two Bubble gums, I did not use her clones.

Lucy - She's tough but showing some brown tips and brown edges. Possible overwatering since I flushed her Friday to get her soil to a 6.8 then gave her nutes. Her pot was still heavy when I did this.

I also raised the lights thinking maybe they were too low and causing some heat stress. Temps have been at 78 w/ RH at 45.

So the good news, Bubblegum Lucy is a bush, wish I had put her in a 10 gallon. She has outgrown the 7.

Group shot: Sick Foxy on the lower right, extra clones i threw in on flower day (Sept 23) lower left, Betty back left, Lucy back right

GB80 gave me clones a few weeks back and they are looking good. did a little LST.

 

[UncleCannabis]

Sorry to hear about your ph issues man.
Tap water with a ph of 8.4 is quite extreme. With a ph of 8.4 you likely have very high mineral content, especially calcium. Using unfiltered tap water with high ph such as this has the potential to cause some Ca/Mg imbalances (too much Ca, not enough Mg) and possibly other toxicity issues but it sounds like you don't see any problems when using nutes along with cal/mag supplements so I assume that you don't have a cal/mag imbalance problem, at least not when additional magnesium is being added as part of the cal/mag dosing.

If you are not using the cal/mag with the tap water only plants then you could end up with the excess calcium issue causing an imbalance. Keep in mind that magnesium is mobile in soil so will leach away, while calcium is immobile so a higher percentage of it should remain in the soil compared to magnesium.
With magnesium being leached, calcium not being leached, then more calcium being added as suspended solid in the tap water waterings it would seem that one could eventually end up with too much calcium and not enough magnesium causing a nutrient lockup issue.

Anyways, forgive me for thinking out loud. I agree that PH is important and maintaining a proper ph range will give much better results.

If you are able to filter your water through a regular filter system (not RO, just a regular filter) this would likely remove a majority of the suspended solids lowering the ph a bit and reducing the excess calcium.

May I ask how you are checking your soil ph?

 

[ColoradoGriz]

Sorry to hear about your ph issues man.
Tap water with a ph of 8.4 is quite extreme. With a ph of 8.4 you likely have very high mineral content, especially calcium. Using unfiltered tap water with high ph such as this has the potential to cause some Ca/Mg imbalances (too much Ca, not enough Mg) and possibly other toxicity issues but it sounds like you don't see any problems when using nutes along with cal/mag supplements so I assume that you don't have a cal/mag imbalance problem, at least not when additional magnesium is being added as part of the cal/mag dosing.

If you are not using the cal/mag with the tap water only plants then you could end up with the excess calcium issue causing an imbalance. Keep in mind that magnesium is mobile in soil so will leach away, while calcium is immobile so a higher percentage of it should remain in the soil compared to magnesium.
With magnesium being leached, calcium not being leached, then more calcium being added as suspended solid in the tap water waterings it would seem that one could eventually end up with too much calcium and not enough magnesium causing a nutrient lockup issue.

Anyways, forgive me for thinking out loud. I agree that PH is important and maintaining a proper ph range will give much better results.

If you are able to filter your water through a regular filter system (not RO, just a regular filter) this would likely remove a majority of the suspended solids lowering the ph a bit and reducing the excess calcium.

May I ask how you are checking your soil ph?

That's great info Uncle C! I do believe one of my issues could be too much calcium. I say this because when I water/feed I water to runoff then when the pots stop dripping, I put them on saucers in the tent. This results in a little runoff that drys off leaving a heavy white residue like dried milk. Soil PH was checked with a probe which luckily coincided with the runoff I checked last night when I watered all but the main flowering plants with tap water Ph'd to 6.2. I did not water the 7 gal plants because their pots were still heavy.

I'm not sure if I want to wait till the pots fully dry out, I feel like I should flush them with Fox Farms Sledgehammer. It's a Yucca product to expel everything from the soil. I feel as if the nutrients are just salts at this point.

I am currently thinking, flush my plants 4 gallons each of the Sledgehammer Ph'd to 5.8-6.0. Followed by 1 gal nutrients at 1/4 strength. 7 gallon pots. Thoughts?

I have been using a garden water filter between my water line and water hose. Although it has brought my PPMs down, it has had little effect on my PH. I hate to blame anything on CaMg but I think it is specific to my water that I may not need it, maybe. I suppose I can stop using it and see what happens. I know my first problems with these plants was when I first used CaMg before my Chicago trip. I just hope it's not too late coming into the 4th week.

I cannot wait to switch over to Coco Coir. Already planning a 4x4 flood table drip to waste system. I initially was going to go hydro and HPS when I started but people talked me into doing soil first, then LEDs were suggested. Soil is okay but Coco sounds more my style.

 

[Shaggn]

IMO, I would drop your PH to 6.5. I've seen that before and I'm sure it was caused mostly by a magnesium deficiency with possibly a slightly high PH. PH issues usually start by showing some leaf twist unless it's way out of whack. I would give a lower PH flush (6.5) and give it a few days to see if the leaf damage stops or mix 1 tablespoon/gal Epsom salts and mist the damaged plant well. Unfortantly those damaged leaves will not recover, remove the really bad ones and watch for new damage. Stop giving Cal/Mg to the damaged one for now, I'm sure it has enough. When damage stops on new growth, wait a bit before resuming Cal/Mg. Hope this helps. Peace!!

 

[ColoradoGriz]

IMO, I would drop your PH to 6.5. I've seen that before and I'm sure it was caused mostly by a magnesium deficiency with possibly a slightly high PH. PH issues usually start by showing some leaf twist unless it's way out of whack. I would give a lower PH flush (6.5) and give it a few days to see if the leaf damage stops or mix 1 tablespoon/gal Epsom salts and mist the damaged plant well. Unfortantly those damaged leaves will not recover, remove the really bad ones and watch for new damage. Stop giving Cal/Mg to the damaged one for now, I'm sure it has enough. When damage stops on new growth, wait a bit before resuming Cal/Mg. Hope this helps. Peace!!

Good Advice! Yes I was thinking of flushing at 5.9-6.0 range in hopes of dropping the soil Ph to a 6.5-6.7 range. I was thinking of doing the 4 gallons, PHing 1 Gallon at a time with time in between until I hit my mark.

I feel another factor is my light schedule. I had my plants doing 12/12 from 12pm to 12 am. I did this thinking it would be better for my schedule and it helped in handling the heat issues without worrying about too cold issues. The downside is feeding during the weekdays occurs at 6pm, halfway through their 12 hours of light. Not a huge factor but it would be preferable to always feed them at the beginning of the light cycle. I'm sure another issue is I should have reduced my nutes using Fox Farms Ocean Forest since that has nutes supposedly good for a month. I probably could have laid off a bit but first grow got excited playing chemist. I suck at chemistry.

 

[UncleCannabis]

Great advise there Shaggn. Cool alias as well. LOL!!

Griz,
IMHO you really need to address your water source. If your tap water has a PH of over about 7.6 or total dissolved solids (TDS) level of @ 160-170 or higher this likely means that your water contains excessive levels of calcium carbonate (hard water) and possibly high level of sodium, iron, and sulfur, etc.
If you are on a municipal/public water system you can usually get a free copy of their water analysis reports just by calling or emailing. This would tell you exactly whats in your water when it leaves the water treatment/pumping station. Because of mineral deposits on water mains the TDS will typically be a slightly higher once it reaches the tap. Total suspended solids will also increase a tad between the pumping/treatment station and your water tap at home.

If standard filtration is not reducing the TDS to 170 or less and your water PH is still above @ 7.6 the only other thing to do really to make this water usable is to run it through a RO system. The typical run of the mill filter system will only remove suspended solids, not dissolved solids.
PH adjusting the 8.4 tap water will bring the ph down but it's not addressing the high mineral content. There will still be high levels of calcium carbonate and other trace elements. Too much iron, sodium, or sulfur will all cause problems too.
Try this, ph adjust some of your tap water then let it set for 24 hours. After 24 hours check the ph again. The ph will likely rise again to excessive levels after it's allowed to set a while because the carbonate is still there and has time to reverse the temporary effects of the ph down that was added.

The white film is both dissolved and suspended solids which include salts and calcium as well as leached soil minerals. There will likely always be some amount of light white film residue but if you're seeing that it is quite thick instead of just a light film this would likely indicate a problem.

On another note, if you are using one of those ph probes with the 2 long prongs that stick into the soil it's very likely that the readings are off by quite a bit. I've probably purchased at least 20 or more of those things over the years and have never gotten lucky and found one that works correctly. The ph readings are sometimes off by 1.0 or more.
To make matters even worse this is the only type of soil ph meter found at your typical local gardening center. If you are able to find a high quality one it will be expensive and still may not be extremely accurate. That being said, the accuracy of a quality soil ph meter is usually good enough for our gardening needs (within @ 0.05 to 0.2 or so of actual soil ph confirmed by laboratory soil testing).
Long story short, those $8.99 pronged type ph meters are not worth the 2 cent plastic bag that it was brought home in.

A cheap and easy way to get an idea of your soil ph would be to check the ph of your water that is to be poured in. Water lightly then wait about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes water again until you get some leaching. Collect the leached water and check the ph again with the same ph pen. If ph is lower than when poured in this would mean that the ph of your soil is less than the ph of the water that was poured in. If the ph of the leached water is higher then this means that your soil ph level is higher than the water that was poured in.

I suggest buying a couple of gallons of distilled water to do this test. The distilled water will be ph 7.0 If the ph of the leached water is less than 6.9 but higher than about 6.3 you should be good to go. If the ph of the leached water is outside of these ranges then this would indicate an excessively high or low soil ph.

Anyways, apologies for the long winded jibberish. I tend to do this sometimes when I'm stoned.....


By the way, I forgot to mention earlier that your Lucy looks fabulous man!!

I've heard alot about this strain but have never been lucky enough to come across any. I do hope that one of those in depth smoke reports of yours will grace the pages of your journal once she's finished up.

 

[ColoradoGriz]

Great advise there Shaggn. Cool alias as well. LOL!!

Griz,
IMHO you really need to address your water source. If your tap water has a PH of over about 7.6 or total dissolved solids (TDS) level of @ 160-170 or higher this likely means that your water contains excessive levels of calcium carbonate (hard water) and possibly high level of sodium, iron, and sulfur, etc.
If you are on a municipal/public water system you can usually get a free copy of their water analysis reports just by calling or emailing. This would tell you exactly whats in your water when it leaves the water treatment/pumping station. Because of mineral deposits on water mains the TDS will typically be a slightly higher once it reaches the tap. Total suspended solids will also increase a tad between the pumping/treatment station and your water tap at home.

If standard filtration is not reducing the TDS to 170 or less and your water PH is still above @ 7.6 the only other thing to do really to make this water usable is to run it through a RO system. The typical run of the mill filter system will only remove suspended solids, not dissolved solids.
PH adjusting the 8.4 tap water will bring the ph down but it's not addressing the high mineral content. There will still be high levels of calcium carbonate and other trace elements. Too much iron, sodium, or sulfur will all cause problems too.
Try this, ph adjust some of your tap water then let it set for 24 hours. After 24 hours check the ph again. The ph will likely rise again to excessive levels after it's allowed to set a while because the carbonate is still there and has time to reverse the temporary effects of the ph down that was added.

The white film is both dissolved and suspended solids which include salts and calcium as well as leached soil minerals. There will likely always be some amount of light white film residue but if you're seeing that it is quite thick instead of just a light film this would likely indicate a problem.

On another note, if you are using one of those ph probes with the 2 long prongs that stick into the soil it's very likely that the readings are off by quite a bit. I've probably purchased at least 20 or more of those things over the years and have never gotten lucky and found one that works correctly. The ph readings are sometimes off by 1.0 or more.
To make matters even worse this is the only type of soil ph meter found at your typical local gardening center. If you are able to find a high quality one it will be expensive and still may not be extremely accurate. That being said, the accuracy of a quality soil ph meter is usually good enough for our gardening needs (within @ 0.05 to 0.2 or so of actual soil ph confirmed by laboratory soil testing).
Long story short, those $8.99 pronged type ph meters are not worth the 2 cent plastic bag that it was brought home in.

A cheap and easy way to get an idea of your soil ph would be to check the ph of your water that is to be poured in. Water lightly then wait about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes water again until you get some leaching. Collect the leached water and check the ph again with the same ph pen. If ph is lower than when poured in this would mean that the ph of your soil is less than the ph of the water that was poured in. If the ph of the leached water is higher then this means that your soil ph level is higher than the water that was poured in.

I suggest buying a couple of gallons of distilled water to do this test. The distilled water will be ph 7.0 If the ph of the leached water is less than 6.9 but higher than about 6.3 you should be good to go. If the ph of the leached water is outside of these ranges then this would indicate an excessively high or low soil ph.

Anyways, apologies for the long winded jibberish. I tend to do this sometimes when I'm stoned.....


By the way, I forgot to mention earlier that your Lucy looks fabulous man!!

I've heard alot about this strain but have never been lucky enough to come across any. I do hope that one of those in depth smoke reports of yours will grace the pages of your journal once she's finished up.

Uncle C you are never long winded and I value every word! I totally agree with you as far as my water. Last night I filled about 8 1 gal milk jugs with PH water. I will retest them tonight. Future water will be RO water from the store until I hook up an RO system. I have already tol the wife the RO isn't just for the plants but it will save her from having to descale the coffee maker so often. Hard water is a huge issue in my house. Unused toilets scale up just from the water sitting, dry skin from taking showers, coffee makers need constant descaling, etc.

As I said earlier, GB80 convinced me to go coco. My planned setup consists of a 4x4 flood table that drains to a resevoir with a sump pump. I can either pump it to my drain by the water heater or to buckets to feed the houseplants. The part I am up in the air about is going:

A) Blumats, with a res pumping into a smaller res on a shelf that gravity drains to the blumats

B) Two reservoirs on timers pumping to halo drippers. One reservoir pumps from PHd RO water, the other from a resevoir of MicroBloom Lucas formula.

My physical disabilities have made this grow a little difficult so if I can eliminate the watering down to monitoring I will have more time to do the other stuff I enjoy like topping, training, photos, and keeping up my journal. I don't expect any of this to make me a better gardener but the happier I am, the happier the plants will be. Plan B stems from current confusion of watering with nutes daily vs watering with nutes every third watering. I figured two reservoirs on different timers could rotate out the waterings to water water nutes water water nutes without having to switch hoses. I found some 9x9 square pots, figuring I could run the plants 3 x 3 rotating plants into the flood table. Just thoughts as I will finish everything that's currently in soil in soil. After the Blue Dream is mothered, those clones will start the coco run.

 

[UncleCannabis]

Hard water is not a gardeners friend. LOL!!

My tap water teeters right on the edge of being unusable. Out of the tap my ph runs about 7.4 with an EC of about 165. I also fight scale deposits in toilets, coffee pots, and faucets. So far I've been lucky but this is one of the reasons that I don't use any cal/mag. If I were to use cal/mag it would likely throw my calcium/magnesium/potassium ratios completely out of whack and cause lockup issues.

I think you'll be pleased with the results that you'll get using straight coco with a hydro setup. If it were me I'd go with option B.
You can't over water coco using hydro so timers would work best and would likely be cheaper as well.
The Blumats use a very small bore tubing for the emitters that would likely get plugged up if using nutrient solutions. If nothing else, it would be risky.

I'll be looking forward to seeing this new hydro setup gracing the pages of your journal.

 

[ColoradoGriz]

Hard water is not a gardeners friend. LOL!!

My tap water teeters right on the edge of being unusable. Out of the tap my ph runs about 7.4 with an EC of about 165. I also fight scale deposits in toilets, coffee pots, and faucets. So far I've been lucky but this is one of the reasons that I don't use any cal/mag. If I were to use cal/mag it would likely throw my calcium/magnesium/potassium ratios completely out of whack and cause lockup issues.

I think you'll be pleased with the results that you'll get using straight coco with a hydro setup. If it were me I'd go with option B.
You can't over water coco using hydro so timers would work best and would likely be cheaper as well.
The Blumats use a very small bore tubing for the emitters that would likely get plugged up if using nutrient solutions. If nothing else, it would be risky.

I'll be looking forward to seeing this new hydro setup gracing the pages of your journal.

Thanks for all of your great advice, it's a confidence booster for me. I'm curious on your thoughts of using Epsom Salt? I think I can rule out using CaMg if I continue to PH my tap. I'm curious if I should use Epsom Salt for the magnesium since calcium seems to be okay. The question is more for reference since if I am switching to RO, I will need the CaMg.

I do like plan B as well. Most of the expense is in the flood table and stand and running a second rez simultaneously will maybe only cost me an extra $60-$80 to set up. Plus it won't hurt in case one pump goes down.

 

[Shaggn]

If you're running hard water, you shouldn't need Cal/Mg. I'm not 100% on this but what I do know is I run tap water also and only run into the occasional magnesium deficiency.

Nice info there UC, very informative. Peace!!

 

[ColoradoGriz]

Okay, I don't suck.

I did a scheduled flush, pots were light enough, and according to the PH pen the Sledgehammer and Boomerang brought my water to a 5.9. I tested it again after 5, 10, 15 minutes and was still 5.9.

Runoff was a 5.1 so I was like WTF? I googled "low PH runoff" and it resulted in countless articles about Fox Farms Ocean Forest losing it's buffering ability about 4-5 week of flower resulting in low runoffs. Solutions are to add dolomite lime if only using the Tiger Bloom, Big Bloom and Grow Big or use all of the products. I'm just going to ride this out, sticking to the nutrient solution. Supposedly the schedule accommodates this loss of soil buffering by having scheduled flushes. I can only hope it gets these plants through harvest.

Dolomite lime.....

Make my own soil....

Coco...coco..coco..coco

COCO and a cool setup like Uncle C

 

[UncleCannabis]

I agree with Shaggn, you probably shouldn't need any additional calcium or magnesium.

The water analysis report that you'll get from your municipal water provider will indicate the magnesium content which would typically be shown in ppm's. If the magnesium content when compared to calcium is around 7:1 to 2:1 (calcium:magnesium) you probably would not need to add any magnesium. *Opinion only.

I lightly dose my tap water with either epsom salts or blackstrap molasses about once every 30 to 45 days or so during a regular watering. Heavy emphasis to be put on the "lightly dose" part.
I'm not even sure that I should be doing this to be honest. I could be doing more harm than good.
I thinks it's more of a placebo effect for me in that it makes me feel good that I'm trying to do a little something extra to show em' some love and TLC. What if any benefit the plants get out of this is anyone's guess. LOL!!

If you do end up installing a RO system for your home it will need to be adequately sized for the amount of water that your family uses. Duh....you know that already I'm sure so I'm not saying this to insult your intelligence. What I'm leading up to here is that a RO filter system sized for filtering the amount of water used by a household would be quite expensive both in initial cost as well as maintenance cost.
You may also need to add a large water storage tank and secondary low pressure pump if using for household use.
On another note, if you'll be using the RO water for drinking you may want to consider a re-mineralization system. Because the RO system will remove most if not all of the minerals, the outlet water won't taste so good.
All of this becomes quite expensive and can be a real pain in the butt to maintain. A standard water softener system may be a better option for your home use.
A small RO sized for your garden is still not cheap, but it would be way cheaper than a large system and a lot less headache.

There I go ranting again.....sorry mate.....

 

[UncleCannabis]

We must have been cross posting. It's great to hear that you've identified the problem!!

 

[UncleCannabis]

Yo Griz....below are a couple of links that might be of good use to you while working out your ph buffering issues.

I was really surprised at all of the information contained in that wikepedia link. It's not often that I've found so much soil science information all in one place. Should be a good read.

Soil - Wikipedia

I noticed that TheCelt has been lurking the halls here bumping into the like button by accident.
Celt has a way of explaining all of this organic chemistry stuff in a way that's super easy for most people to understand, even me, and won't take up a whole page of your journal. LOL!!

It appears that you're onto the problem and probably have it by the horns from this point but I'm sure that Celt would be happy to help out if you feel the need.