Bassman59's Revenge of the Clones! 600w Pro-Bloom LED - RDWC - Grow #2

[YardDog35]

Great job Bass! I think it's so cool how you have embraced growing! I know the meds are for your Mother (I commend you for that), but I get the sense you are really digging this growing thing and its become more than just that original goal. You are good at what you're doing and you're not afraid to take risks, a great combo. I'm watching this experiment as it seems to be working. All of this started from a little pack of seeds, flat out awesome

Keep it up

 

[Bassman59]

thanks dog.

You were the first to welcome me to and offer some guidance and positive encouragement. And for that I'm thankful We're dawgs now buddy!

many thanks to the community as a whole too. It's been a wonderful welcoming.

Yea I've embraced this growing thing too. And it does have it's "fun" element. I mean I am an old pothead. And tbh, I hope to earn a cpl extra bucks to help pay for mom's care too. Nothing overboard or anything. Just to help. But I'm also so far removed from that community too.

 

[Bassman59]

Well time for an update.

The other grow is out of the tent. Cleaned everything up and started working on trying to find a way to make 8 plants and 3 tubs work in a 4x4 tent. I just couldn't make it work knowing how much growth is coming. So, I went two tubs, just like my last grow, adjusted a bit. Smoothed out the water flow to & from the chiller. More space between the tubs for width of plants.

Transplanting them was a bitch! Gingerly separating roots, obviously breaking some. I hope they'll be alright. I think they will from some previous reading I have done.

This leaves two in the closet under the cfl's. Well I guess they will get to be Bonsai moms. I took 6 cuttings earlier in the day and put them into root riot cubes and domed.

My plan was to transplant them and go to 36 hrs lights out then 12/12. However, because of the terrorizing of some of the roots I feel like it's a better idea to give them 24 more hrs of light (this time under the 600w led), before turning the lights out, pending they look good.

When you look at the pics below, remember they have been under 4 23-26w cfl's for about 60 days and have gone under some heavy defoliation. I took a medium heavy amount of leaves out about 5 days ago but didnt update that.
I also did a little bit of bending & training (and tying) as it was obvious a few large branches were going to crowd out in the middle.

All of these are between 16-20" tall. This means stretch could hit 60" which is 3" too high for my LED after I made a hanger change for more height. I topped the 20 incher a few days ago to try to prevent that but it looks like some super cropping will be next on the agenda to learn.

I don't think they are as wide as they should be. My thoughts are a couple reasons. 1.) Closet too narrow to properly train in a 60 day veg. 2.) I didn't top enough and bend more earlier.

Here's some pic that hopefully give a decent perspective.

 

[Bassman59]

Forgot to mention, I recently got some free guidance from a large grower. He suggested 90% of us over feed the hell out of our plants even when they dont show nute burn. He offered some guidance and I've lowered my mix.

Using Blue Planet two part, at 70%, adding Hygrozyme, Voodoo Juice, and calmag+.

PPM 760
PH 5.7

 

[jjames]

b, thats interesting about the overfeeding, so was he sayin that is just a straight waste of nutes supply wise for us? or is it having a negative effect for the plants as well?
looks like a good start to round 2.

 

[Bassman59]

Basically yes wasting. But he also did say it will effect the quality by over feeding. All while looking fine.

How to nute your plants correctly
Never ever ever ever ever listen to what the nute companys tell you. Never. Your meter and your plants will tell you how high to nute. The way that you nute is that you draw a line in one of your buckets of where you keep the water level at. Anytime you take a reading, you must have the water filled to that line. What you want to see is that your plants eat 60 ppm over 3 days. For example if you put 600ppm of nutes in, you want the meter to read 540 in 3 days when you top off the buckets back to the line. If they ate more than 60 then yoir levels are too low. If they ate nothing and the reading is the same or higher then you are too high. Its that simple.

He runs 76 x 1000w grows at 5 locations getting 2lbs per 1k watts with 6 foot bushes.

This makes some sense too. During the last 2-3 weeks I had gone up in ppm in my other grow. The last 10-12 days I was adding straight ro water as the ppm's were skyrocketing. The plants were drinking water and not eating nutrients. They were not eating because they had been over fed. Though signs of nute burn were minor and only in the last few days.

 

[jjames]

so as you were adding ro water and the ppm was rising, did it dilute and lower the ppm after you added water, or did it bring ppm back to the original reading when you added water, then go back up as water level dropped. did i get that right?

so at res change, initially having the nutrient/ppm level too high will cause them not too eat? even as you add water through out the week?

at last res change, i had upped my nutes too, and the ppm was higher than i wanted, so i added a little water to dilute, i guess every grow is different...

good post!

 

[Bassman59]

say I did a res change at 1300ppm (too high for my meter). In 2-3 days it was 1500-1600 ppm and down 2 gals. I would add back 2 gals of just water and the nutes would go down to a 1250-1300 ppm reading. So ya, you get the idea.

a couple key things: Know what scale your meter is on. Mine is .500, others are .700. He basically said to keep the feed level around 700 ppm with this meter.

 

[jjames]

crap, i think i bought the cheapest off-brand ppm meter avail. theres not even a namebrand on it.

 

[Bassman59]

doesnt have directions on use or calibration info? I kept my paperwork on mine.

 

[jjames]

I still have the 1/4 page insert telling how to calibrate an thats it. Prob a bad sign, but it was $11, i get what i paid for i guess. Im gonna upgrade on ph an ppm meters when i can afford. Effin christmas...

 

[Bassman59]

no brand name on the paperwork to search?

 

[jjames]

It says 'tds' above the readout buts thats it. And just some generic instructions... Got it on ebay.

 

[Tweed]

Just to clarify, is that 600 to 700 total ppm after you add your additives, etc in addition to the ppm of your water, being 0ppm with R.O> water, or my 280ppm city tap water?

enjoying your journal immensely! keep the wonderful pics coming my friend

 

[Bassman59]

I took it as 6-700 ppm.

post a pic of your meter here.

 

[norcalgrown]

awesome page man. love your grow. and these plants loooooove being messed with the more you mess with them and bend them and train them and defoliar them as long as you dont over do it its amazing. what was the blu ray laser tech you were mentioning early on?

 

[norcalgrown]

ive got 6 under a 1600w of hps and 8 under 1000w mh
running.power vision,pineapple express, ec sour d, sour tsunami.
got another one or two im forgetting, 18 blue dream seedlings under 250w mh with my 40 clones.

Nor*caL

 

[Bassman59]

oh that blu ray shit was a joke reference on some idiot in another thread.

Having water circulation issues presently. Having a hard time getting it balanced between the tubs. I'll get it, just kinda a pain in the ass when you start off thinking ass backwards like I did and doing exactly the opposite I should to balance the flow. Would be so much easier if I had 1.5" pvc pipe and 1/2" drain-recirc. But I literally didnt have (and still dont) a $5 hack saw and a $2 elbow when I needed to get these moved and too broke atm to buy one. Literally. In all my 52 yrs I've never been this poor. Taking care of elderly mom has had it's toll. But I know in my heart it's the right thing to do.
Just hope it doesnt make us homeless this month!

 

[treezzz]

just caught up on your second grow. I'm subbed! i feel you on being completely broke. at least we have our ganj haha

 

[Bassman59]

Update:

Flowering is just barely starting. Just slightly see some hairs. Did a little more bending the last few days. All the bends are self supporting now. I'm sure I'll be tying up more in the future.

I'm only taking a few fan leaves off here and there presently. I dont want to strip much off during stretch, so it's just light strategic removal.

As you can see the 90 degree bend from pic #5 in last update to present is not even noticeable. But the position of the top is very good. It spread almost the perfect amount. I may actually bend it out some more to further open the middle once I get another look in a few days.

Mostly all this defoliation during veg has created tons of bud sites. Each plant looks to have 7-10 flowering sites at or near the top. Even some of these will get bent out a little for more middle penetration. Numerous of the lower branches are bent way out and are getting good light.

I still think I misjudged however and should have done more topping to reduce height and even more bending in veg. This heavy defoliation for higher yield technique looks very promising even with my miscues.

I'm going to upload 16 pics. Many closeups that show top views are of one plant each. You'll see lots of bud sites. Some of the other pictures are to show more of the overall plant structure below the canopy.

Enjoy:

Side view:

Top tent view:

Lower structure:

3 plant top view:

Single plant top view(s):