JoJo's Hempy SOG 'n SCROG - LED - C99 - Northern Lights - NL99

[jojo677]

Jojo I really like what you've done with that grow room. Good job bud.

Thanks for joining Juan! I'm trying to set my room up right, but still make it all pretty easily removable. The best thing about this current setup is how cool it stays, and how good airflow is!

Rocketing right along JoJo. I'm glad someone finally got some use out of that ph pen reservoir idea.
About your yellowing plant- remember you did say guesses, Lol, it led me to go looking at the old sick plant charts again, partly because I sometimes see my plants getting yellowing in the foliage closest to the light and am curious about this. Someone told me it's calmag but that doesn't seem to fit... So I went and looked around again and as always- nothing conclusive. But- high ph would cause zinc deficiencies- which, it seems to me, in the early stages could look like the symptoms you have.
Hope all's well. Looking great!

I appreciate all guesses, that's what I'm doing! My first instinct was that it was a zinc deficiency, but that didn't make sense to me, so I blamed it on the pH. We could be right.. It's looking about the same today, except these plants are rebounding and starting to stretch! I'll keep an eye out for that coloring.

If it was pH, it was due to a series of unfortunate events. I started adding Silicon, which is very basic and raises the pH a lot. Then my meter broke and I tried using litmus paper. New meter now!


On topic: I noticed some pistils today. All 4x of the NL99 have some pistils showing. Some are super tiny, but some are respectable. I guess that means they're ready to bud!

 

[jojo677]

Update (5 days flower, 47 days old):

The plants are looking much better and bigger! They're definitely stretching pretty fast, and I'm wishing I trimmed off more of the lower budsites before I flipped. I'll wait a few weeks and do it around 15-21 days though. They also kept growing outward, so I use wire to pull the branches closer to the one opposite of it. I also moved 3 / 5 SOG plants to the flowering room. Hopefully they're recovered enough. I'll get some healthier clones here soon, and start filling up the flower cab! It's going to be beautiful when all the grow space is filled!

I'll start with the veg cab. All are looking healthier, and I fed the C99 mother a bit more, since she's having slow/odd growth from being deprived/pot-bound. All of the NL99 and the NL clones are looking great too! Those leaves are WAY fatter than the C99's right now.

Now for the flowering girls/"seedlings". I wanted to get some of the fan leaves out of the way, but I hate cutting them off, so I decided to try some leaf training. I think (maybe) I have heard of this somewhere, but I don't trust myself on this one. Anyway, I bent/snapped the stems to get the leaves out of the way, and some plants responded better than others. Some bent without breaking, and some snapped pretty easily. I figure this way they can still use the nutrients in the leaf, but they can be "trained" to be out of the way. In theory anyway...

Be well!

 

[jojo677]

Oh, and I should note, my pH issues seem to be resolved on the NL. The silicon product I'm using raises my pH a bunch, so my broken pH meter wasn't helping me figure it out much. All better now, though!

 

[Bamalabrat]

I broke my pH pen and did not know it. I was getting crazy reading for a few days so I tried to calibrate it and then found it was broken. Screwed me up for most of a week. That really hurt. So I feel your pain. I have to say that your nursery looks great. Keep it up. The bud factory is in full production mode now!

 

[jojo677]

Isn't it fun trying to figure out what is going on with your plants, only to find out your pH meter is bad? I've had it happen once before, so I should have known...

On that topic, any ideas on what the BEST way to store a cheapo meter (or any meter) to keep it functioning properly? I currently store mine in a saturated potassium chloride solution, but I hear that the pH 4 buffer solutions are also recommended. Some store in pH 7 solutions though. Of course there aren't any directions for the cheapos anyway.

 

[Bamalabrat]

There is a diy thing that was just floating around on one of the journals that I follow. If I find it again I will let you know.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Isn't it fun trying to figure out what is going on with your plants, only to find out your pH meter is bad? I've had it happen once before, so I should have known...

On that topic, any ideas on what the BEST way to store a cheapo meter (or any meter) to keep it functioning properly? I currently store mine in a saturated potassium chloride solution, but I hear that the pH 4 buffer solutions are also recommended. Some store in pH 7 solutions though. Of course there aren't any directions for the cheapos anyway.

I've always left the Bluelab meter ph probe dangling in my veg room water reservoir- rainwater, sometimes with calmag in it. Was just posting to you kind of scratching my head wondering why it would be ok to store it this way till the awful truth dawned on me and I abandoned that post and went googling. Turns out I'm supposed to be storing it in KCl (obviously...Duh). I imagine rainwater must be a horrible thing to store it in Oh well- it still works so far.

 

[MagicJim]

Isn't it fun trying to figure out what is going on with your plants, only to find out your pH meter is bad? I've had it happen once before, so I should have known...

On that topic, any ideas on what the BEST way to store a cheapo meter (or any meter) to keep it functioning properly? I currently store mine in a saturated potassium chloride solution, but I hear that the pH 4 buffer solutions are also recommended. Some store in pH 7 solutions though. Of course there aren't any directions for the cheapos anyway.

My meter from ETEKCITY said "After use, turn off the pH meter, rinse the electrode in distilled water and replace the protective cap."

I tested it Saturday in the 4.0 and 8.68 buffer powders that they included for calibration and I found no re-calibration was necessary. I bought this one about 2 months ago and use it regularly. I keep it stored in its plastic box in dry condition.

 

[jojo677]

Well I did a bit of digging around on the web today, and from what I found, the best solution to store your meter in is whatever the glass electrode is filled with (which is usually potassium chloride). I'll do some more research tomorrow, but here's a excerpt from one article.

The simplest thing that can be done is to keep the probe submerged in liquid. The special conductive glass coating shouldn't be left to dry out... always keep it hydrated, or it may stop working! You can buy special storage solutions for this purpose. Either keep the probe submerged in a falcon tube, or keep the probe covered with the special cap it came with. The exact type of solution used will depend on your meter, as different probes have different requirements. Combined electrodes (those consisting of both the glass and reference electrodes) are typically stored in a concentrated solution of whatever is inside the probe — the concentration should be higher to prevent diffusion out of the probe. pH meters with two separate electrodes can have their glass electrodes stored in an acidic solution of roughly pH 3. In either case, never use distilled or deionized water, as prolonged submersion in water can encourage diffusion out of the electrode, which will affect its sensitivity.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Bluelab seems like a good company. If I can reach the right person I'm sure they'd love to talk my ear off about all things relating to ph probes and storage. I'll send an email and see what comes of it

 

[rhetorrikz]

Jojo reps!
Weasel you keep popping up making me laugh.!
Good on ya guys

 

[tucker99]

Back to the PH meter,gents. I just bought a bottle of the storage solution. It has the protective plastic film under the cap and I just made a hole the same size as the probe. The stuff should last years. I have the low and high calibration solution and I was calibrate the meter ever week when I stored in in distilled water. Now that I have the storage solution it doesn't need calibrated. Just a little FWIW.

 

[jojo677]

Update (9 days flower, 51 days old):

The plants are all looking awesome! It's incredible how much the the pH can affect them, but they're in much better shape now. They've grown quite a bit, and now bud formation is about to start. Things are going to start getting sticky soon.

I don't see a lot of pictures of this stage of the plant, but it's right before they start budding. The top node starts growing really tight node spacing. I think it's cool!

As for the veg plants, I did a bit to each of them. I cloned the tops of the NL99 mothers, as I figured I might as well SOG some of them, to see how they do. Before and after:

I also watered the C99 bucket clone with week 1 nutes. She's not doing very well, and I think it is because I haven't been watering with runoff. Whoops, there I go again!

I finally got around to finishing the light proofing in the veg cab today too. I just stapled on some cardboard and it blocks the little light that was coming through.

 

[Bamalabrat]

Looks awesome JoJo. For such a small space, you are really rocking out a lot of plants. I think you would do great on that show tiny house nation or something like that. You could grow a rainforest in one of those small spaces.

 

[jojo677]

Bluelab seems like a good company. If I can reach the right person I'm sure they'd love to talk my ear off about all things relating to ph probes and storage. I'll send an email and see what comes of it

Do report back! Surely they know better than most people. Good thinking Weasel!

Jojo reps!
Weasel you keep popping up making me laugh.!
Good on ya guys

Thanks rhet! You're a few weeks ahead of me, so you probably more going on at your grow than I do here... I'll catch up!

Back to the PH meter,gents. I just bought a bottle of the storage solution. It has the protective plastic film under the cap and I just made a hole the same size as the probe. The stuff should last years. I have the low and high calibration solution and I was calibrate the meter ever week when I stored in in distilled water. Now that I have the storage solution it doesn't need calibrated. Just a little FWIW.

Interesting! Would you mind sharing what pH the storage solution measures? Just curious what the stores are selling.

 

[jojo677]

Looks awesome JoJo. For such a small space, you are really rocking out a lot of plants. I think you would do great on that show tiny house nation or something like that. You could grow a rainforest in one of those small spaces.

Haha, thanks Bama! I almosted titled the journal "Growing Big in Little Spaces", but I went the descriptive way instead, for some silly reason. The space is only about 50% full, but the clones I took today should help fill that space before too long

 

[Weaselcracker]

I sent in as long winded a question as I could squeeze into the 500 character limit in the text window at the Bluelab website. Which wasn't nearly as long winded as I wanted it to be. I got an email back saying to store the probe in KCl solution, and not to store it in the ph 7 or ph4 solutions.
I would have appreciated a more long winded answer but the constant problem I run into, when annoying companies with my questions. as I like to do, is that the people answering the phones and emails are not the same people as the ones doing the technical work- so they just give some sort of stock answer. I'm tempted to ask a bunch more questions but instead I went googling and found more info in the bowels of their website.

Bluelab pH Probe KCl Storage Solution contains the same mix as the KCl reference found in Bluelab pH probes or pens.

I wish I'd poked around in their website sooner actually. The meter didn't come with much info.

 

[jojo677]

Good info Weasel, thank you! Do you use the Bluelab storage solution? Or does anyone else here use proper 'storage solution' that may be a potassium chloride solution? And would anyone measure the PPM of said solution? I'm curious as to what strength it is. I just checked my saturated KCl solution and was at like 4500 PPM, which is a little high for my liking, but I don't know what it's supposed to be.

I figure it should be OK since one of of the reasons you don't store in distilled water is that the KCl can, over time, diffuse through the glass and are then no longer accurate. I would think if my storage solution is stronger than the probe solution, I'll get some diffusion back into the probe, recharging it in a way. I could be completely wrong though, but I've been thinking about this lately. Oh the questions a grower has...

I'm hoping to eventually gather up enough info to put up a tutorial of an accurate DIY storage solution for most pH meters, for those too cheap to buy it, or don't have access to it. From what I've seen, most people (myself included) don't really know the best way to store it!

 

[Weaselcracker]

I don't appear to even have any KCl solution. amazing isn't it? None came with my Bluelab meter, or not a worthwhile amount anyway. Probably I got a tiny plastic envelope full and failed to notice. I did get a few sample envelopes of the ph solutions. I'll go look around, but definitely need to order some. To make matters more complicated, the hydro shop I usually order from- which I got the meter from for nearly $400, doesn't seem to stock the storage solution, so I'll have to go searching elsewhere.
When/if I do get the KCl solution I'll test the ppm. I assume this will tell me all I need to know. I would email Bluelab again to ask about the content of their storage solution, but sense that this would be beyond the powers of the service girl.
It's ridiculous that I failed to compute the need for storing the probe in the proper solution. I really should know better.

How does a solution travel through glass?

 

[Growlow]

Growing big in little spaces! Love it Awesome closet/attic job!