Pink's New Grow Room: Perpetual Fun and Games

Great bunch of info in that post! The training in the tent looks terrific and so do the plants, though I was a bit confused by the unvarnished nails in the top pics. By the end the pink glitter was back so I knew where I was. :cheesygrinsmiley:

How's the reveg going? Tough to tell from the mother-plant pic. Also, do your net pots not fit around your collars? I don't understand the reason for cutting them in half and then putting them back around the foam.

Good work getting ahead of those mite! :thumb:

And if anyone wants an easy aeroponic cloner build, I did one here:

Building an aeroponic cloner bucket, aka The Cloninator!

How to build my cloninator aeroponic cloning bucket! This is the original but I've made a few modifications since then. I'll put those at the end in case you'd like to try them. I started with a 2 gallon bucket and lid from Home Depot. I got this pump from Amazon...
www.420magazine.com
 
My nails are pink and white ombre. Lol. If I don’t cut the bottoms and split the net pots, I can’t get the plant out of the pots safely, without destroying the new roots. I can’t up pot until they go in the flowering tent. If I had a larger DWC unit but I don’t. And thanks for the aeroponic instructions!
 
Update
First, take a look around:

Mother Plants.jpg

Mother Plants.jpg


corner view.jpg

corner view.jpg


roots2.jpg

roots2.jpg


roots.jpg

roots.jpg


clones.jpg

clones.jpg


Clones
The clones are doing very well, and I will be deciding which ones to keep in a few days. I'm going to add some airstones to the cloner in a few days, to add more misting and reduce the amount of water I need in the reservoir. I originally cut two of four separate varieties: Expert Gorilla Glue, Skywalker Triangle Kush, Fire OG and Harlequin, a high CBD and low THC variety. All except the Harlequin are likely to get purple - they are similar but from different hybrid strains.

Mother Plants
These are my first mother plants. So I'm learning. I originally planted them early last fall, growing from seed. I let them flower while small, to get a feel for their growth periods and ascertain whether they were good smoking or not. They all passed. In addition to the four I cut clones from, an Expert Haze mother is in front. I've enjoyed watching them grow. The hardest one to clone is Skywalker Triangle Kush. The easiest is Harlequin. Expert Haze was slow to reveg. Harlequin is the top revegger, followed by Expert Gorilla Glue. Skywalker Triangle Kush is covered in female pistils.
Harlequin is the middle plant. Back left is Fire OG; Skywalker Triangle is back right. Front right is Expert Haze and Front left is Expert Gorilla Glue.

Mom tent.jpg

Mom tent.jpg


mom tent.jpg

mom tent.jpg


revegging.jpg

revegging.jpg


Moms2reveg.jpg

Moms2reveg.jpg


MOM rev.jpg

MOM rev.jpg


Mother Plants.jpg

Mother Plants.jpg



Flowering Tent (now in veg)
The four plants there were planted in five gallon pots on Decbemer 7. Today is January 26. Ive been taking my time with them, pruning and training them to grow in a proper scrog formation. Last grow there was too much undergrowth and too many stems per square. I'm trying to see that each square will have only one or two stalks coming up. So now we are about 2/3 of the way there. Here are some photos of the growth:
FT full.jpg

FT full.jpg


FT pics.jpg

FT pics.jpg


FT tucking.jpg

FT tucking.jpg


big tent.jpg

big tent.jpg


canopy.jpg

canopy.jpg


across.jpg

across.jpg


scrogging 2.jpg

scrogging 2.jpg


scrogging.jpg

scrogging.jpg


scrogging3.jpg

scrogging3.jpg


corner view.jpg

corner view.jpg


canopy today.jpg

canopy today.jpg

 
Slow and steady is really doing the trick on that scrog. It's filling in really well with just a couple of open squares left. It's like a game of Othello!
 
Update on Grow and a Revelation
Ok, so here's where we are. I have four plants thriving in the Flowering Tent, 2 Blue Dream and 2 Expert Haze. They are currently in veg, and have been there for a couple of months. I'm letting them grow slowly and steadily until I have the squares filled in the net. In the meantime, I have kept the undergrowth trimmed. In about two weeks, the canopy will begin to grow vertically.
scrogging3.jpg

scrogging3.jpg


scrogging.jpg

scrogging.jpg


scrogging 2.jpg

scrogging 2.jpg


canopy across top.jpg

canopy across top.jpg


canopy across.jpg

canopy across.jpg


canopy right.jpg

canopy right.jpg


Meanwhile, clones and Mom tent are clicking along.

clones now.jpg

clones now.jpg


Mother Plants.jpg

Mother Plants.jpg


trimmed Moms.jpg

trimmed Moms.jpg


And now the relevation.
I have been dealing with a pest. Please see the next post.
 
Fungus gnats have invaded my Mom tent. I’m not surprised, because fungus gnats are everywhere but Antarctica, and they proliferate around plants and vegetation. Fruit flies are similar in size, but these aren’t fruit flies. The gnats, themselves, are fairly harmless to the top of the plants. They lay eggs in the growing medium, and these hatch out maggots, and it is these maggots that feed on the roots and damage them.

These larvae will chew and strip roots and will destroy your crop. In the Mom tent, they were even more damaging, because these are plants I’m hoping to keep. I had them before, years ago, and this is my first redo; I had forgotten everything, and back then my journals were non-existent and sketchy, even when I did keep records. The only way I realized back then that I had a problem was when the damage appeared in the plant tops. I had deformed leaves and shiny leaves (not a revegging). The issue was corrected, but I lost a month of veg time. [1]

Luckily, I have prevented the infestation from spreading to my other tents. However, my nursery and flowering tents are both fairly sterile and lacking in anything that the gnats like to eat. The Mom tent was grown to bud and then stripped and revegged. It was in this stage the gnats appeared, because they love to eat on old buds and stuff that end up below the new leaves and growth.

"Fungus gnats develop through four stages —egg, larva (with four larval stages or instars), pupa, and adult. The tiny eggs and oblong pupae occur in damp organic media where females lay eggs and larvae feed. At 75ºF, eggs hatch in about 3 days, the larvae take approximately 10 days to develop into pupae, and about 4 days later the adults emerge. A generation of fungus gnats (from female to female) can be produced in about 17 days depending upon temperature. The warmer it is, the faster they will develop and the more generations will be produced in a year."

The first step was to identify the pests. I put up sticky traps and verified the infestation and the culprits as fungus gnats.

The second step was to spray the plants with insecticide; I used Mighty Mite because it kills everything. But only on top. The fungus larvae were in the roots. And from the numbers of gnat carcasses on the flood tray, the traps and the floor, we were barely in time to stop this from getting out of control.

Third, I put Mosquito Bits on top of the coco substrate and mixed it lightly in the top. Mosquito bits will kill fungus gnat larvae, because it contains BT – Bacillus thuringiensis var. Isarelensis. Just make certain the bits don’t get in the reservoir, or you will soon have a white mold overtaking everything. There are other methods of administering this stuff – look it up online. I chose Mosquito Bits because it was cheap. And I can use them from the beginning in the coco/perlite as a preventative.

Fourth, I used hydrogen peroxide as a drench and poured the mixture into each pot. I am using coco/perlite, so the main focus was on the root ball at the bottom of the pots. It has been found that neither coco coir or peat moss are of any use in inhibiting the fungus gnat larvae from growth and completion. (Evans, Smith, & Cloyd, 1998). However, an 8 percent solution of H2O2 will kill the larvae eventually.

Fifth, I put AZAMAX in the reservoir. I used a four ounce bottle of concentrate for my 10-gal reservoir. It turns the water to milky white, but it kills a broad range of larvae, naturally, with Azadirachtin A & B as active ingredients and more than 100 limonoids.

I did overkill on this because I don’t want to have to tear it all out and start over. I have taken preventative measures in the other tents.


[1] This is why you won’t be sorry if you keep records. This is also why experience is important, and emphasizes the suggestion that new growers start slow and small and work through problems in miniature, before they invest in large grows.
 
Plants look great but sorry to hear about your gnat issue. If you dissolve the mosquito bits in a bucket of water and use that for your nute mixes, it will completely eliminate the problem going forward. And the longer that water sits, the more BT is growing in it.

Pinktiger777 said:
but I lost a month of veg time. [1]
Click to expand...
First time I've seen reference numbers used here!
:welldone:

[Though it doesn't take you to the bottom of the post.]
 
InTheShed said:
Plants look great but sorry to hear about your gnat issue. If you dissolve the mosquito bits in a bucket of water and use that for your nute mixes, it will completely eliminate the problem going forward. And the longer that water sits, the more BT is growing in it.


First time I've seen reference numbers used here!
:welldone:

[Though it doesn't take you to the bottom of the post.]
Click to expand...
I was doing it in word and trying to document my reference literature
 
Update on Grow, Monday, February 15
The Big tent went 12/12 on the new moon Feb 11.
These babies were put in the big tent in five-gallon fabric bags on December 1. So about 2.5 months of vegging before going to flower. This added about five weeks to my grow time, but that is OK. I'm learning a new technique and trying to add to my skill level. If I were doing Sea of Green, I could plant about fifty plants in the space of a 5 x 5 tent. I'm not sure I would ever do that. Instead, I'm doing Screen of Green. I decided to do four plants.
Once the plants got to the first net, I began to defoliate until the portion under the net was naked branch.
The next step was to carefully prune the branches above the net, so that the number of possible branches going up were spaced so that no more than one shoot would come up in each square in the grid created by the net.
Thanks to @InTheShed for turning me on to that (although his method was for 21 days after flower; I'm going to do that too, LOL).

3rd day of flower.jpg

3rd day of flower.jpg


canopy .jpg

canopy .jpg


center canopy.jpg

center canopy.jpg


closeup.jpg

closeup.jpg


left canopy.jpg

left canopy.jpg


Meanwhile, the Mother plants are doing well. I finally got all the gnats, I hope. This is what I'm doing now for the gnats: I made a culture from Mosquito bit water (wash the Mosquito Bits - a half cup or so - in a half gallon of water, then strain the bits out and put the water in a tightly closed jar in the dark. In a day you will have a BT culture showing up like "mother" in vinegar at the botton of the jar.) Everytime I change the res in the mother tent, I add a cup of this to the res. This is working now to kill the gnats in larvae stage in the root system of the plants. And it is kept in check by additions of H2O2 with every addition of water to the tank. Plus, I add Z7 Enzymes (Flying Skull).
BT stands for Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis. You can spend a lot of money and buy this stuff by itself, but you don't need that much unless you are doing large scale operations. BT is a game changer. It has helped eradicate black flies and mosquitos in regions where malaria is endemic. It has made being outside comfortable in places where before, the biting flies and mosquitos made it dangerous and painful to be there before BT.
A container of Mosquito Bits is less than $10. It should last you years. Just be aware that it takes about a month to get through the life cycle of the last gnat that laid eggs in your roots. And also be aware that a little goes a long way and you don't want to have an overgrowth of BT in your system. It looks like snot, a lot of white snot. Yuk.

mother plants.jpg

mother plants.jpg


I don't want to talk about the clones, but I will. When I was fooling around with BT it got in my clone water (OK, OK, I put it there. Shut up.) There was nothing to counteract the BT in the res. It overgrew and loved the air stones, clotting them up so they didn't run. The BT grabbed the clones and killed them, shutting off their water supply and clogging the roots. It was horrible and it took me weeks to figure it all out, but now I have new clones and a clean tank and four air stones doing an incredible job. I had to finally get it all killed by putting it in chlorine bleach and letting it soak, res and airstones and clone collars,etc.
So I'll show them to you later when I can brag. LOL
 
Pssst: the clones are looking fine this afternoon.
 
Glad you sorted that out!
 
Not a chance! Trial and error is what this whole grow thing is about. :high-five:
 
InTheShed said:
Not a chance! Trial and error is what this whole grow thing is about. :high-five:
Click to expand...
This year has been challenging in the grow room as well as all. LOL
 
Pests can be a real problem if you are not on it immediately. I used to grow outdoors in Southern CA and always struggled with one pest or another.

I just moved to the mid-west and started my first aero setup in my basement and have made it through the whole grow with not one pest. I hope I don't jinx myself ...with no dirt, it virtually eliminated bugs so it made all the extra work totally worth it.

Are you using any kind of automation or manually checking everything?

I enjoyed reading through, keep it up - lots of good info...
 
lvumlow said:
I used to grow outdoors in Southern CA and always struggled with one pest or another.
Click to expand...
I grow outside in Los Angeles, and aphids love my garden...not to mention the occasional influx of thrips. That's the price I pay instead of the electric bill :).
 
lvumlow said:
Pests can be a real problem if you are not on it immediately. I used to grow outdoors in Southern CA and always struggled with one pest or another.

I just moved to the mid-west and started my first aero setup in my basement and have made it through the whole grow with not one pest. I hope I don't jinx myself ...with no dirt, it virtually eliminated bugs so it made all the extra work totally worth it.

Are you using any kind of automation or manually checking everything?

I enjoyed reading through, keep it up - lots of good info...
Click to expand...
Hi there! I'm pretty much manual. I have timers on watering and lights, but I have to do all the ph and everything by hand. I've been really lucky with not having to deal with pests. Not sure how I got these gnats, but I think they were probably introduced from outside somehow.
 
...everything is frozen outside here so I guess there is little chance of introduction from that source for now. I am not sure if I will have the same luck this summer but soil does have a lot to do with insects reproduction cycles so I am glad to be rid of that medium. I used to have a pet praying mantis and would occasionally get some lady bugs from the local garden center but nothing has gotten me worse than caterpillars. I remember having a bad year a few years back; those little guys can do a lot of damage real fast!
 
lvumlow said:
...everything is frozen outside here so I guess there is little chance of introduction from that source for now. I am not sure if I will have the same luck this summer but soil does have a lot to do with insects reproduction cycles so I am glad to be rid of that medium. I used to have a pet praying mantis and would occasionally get some lady bugs from the local garden center but nothing has gotten me worse than caterpillars. I remember having a bad year a few years back; those little guys can do a lot of damage real fast!
Click to expand...
Yeah,we are also snowed in, here.
 

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