I think many of us routinely feed our plants more nitrogen than they actually need - in some cases, significantly so. That may be why a lot of people see somewhere in the neighborhood of a 50% M:F ratio (when using "non-feminized" seeds) - when, in nature, a few males should be more than sufficient to pollinate a large field of female cannabis plants. Actually, one could, in theory, spoil I mean pollinate just about every bit of sinsemilla within a ¼-mile radius, given fair and variable winds... But a few more would help in terms of genetic diversity. I've always thought that we ought to get closer to 80% females (if not more) if the conditions were optimum during the plants' early stage.
A lot of people seem to like to keep upping the nutrients until they see burning, then back the levels down only slightly. I have been guilty of this, as well. But at some point I started wondering if that was why most folks seem to feel the need to flush their plants so thoroughly, lol. Flushing... is something that they do not experience when grown outdoors in their natural environment. In better times, some of the better tasting cannabis that I grew - and in DWC hydroponic reservoirs, lol - only got slight flushing, if at all. But those plants... I saw leaf yellowing (and leaf drop) by harvest time. It was like... Well, I was busy - and lazy - and wasn't pushing the girls. Plus, it was at a time when I always had more cannabis than I could seem to get rid of (THAT is just a fading memory...). It's funny: Some of the times when I put forth the least amount of effort was when the plants seemed to reward me the most. Go figure.
Speaking of hydroponics, I would often mix at a certain pH. Then I would let the plants slowly change it (by their consumption of nutrients), and after it had changed a bit, I'd add in some more (flowering) nutrients, which would put the pH right back where it started. I might stretch a reservoir past the week that I had originally intended, maybe double the time that way, sometimes adding more nutrients, sometimes adding water. I guess that'd be tough now without meters :rolleyes3 . And it wasn't really relevant when I had LARGE plants in hot conditions under strong "wind" - they might consume/transpire 15, even 20 gallons of water in 24 hours. But I have been thinking about throwing some clones in two-liter bottles (what folks call "hempy" these days) - which as you know, depending on the medium, is a form of passive hydroponics. And I am wondering if it might be of any benefit if I was to try to mimic that gentle pH change over time manually, by alternating (slightly) the pH of what I pour into the bottles. Do you have any thoughts/opinions on such an idea?
BtW, the PPM levels that you mentioned... do they count what is already in your water supply (or do you use RO/distilled/etc.)? IIRC, my tap water is loaded, over 300 PPM (mostly calcium, I think, so I could probably get by with Epsom salt in lieu of a Cal-Mag product, I expect). Seems like its pH was not great, either, something like 8.1 last time I checked which, unfortunately, was about three years ago, so I have no idea now. I still have not managed to find a way to budget a new probe for my pH pen (and I am only hoping that the meter, itself, is still fine) and by friend no longer works at a local wastewater treatment plant - so I do not have the luxury of "taking over" its lab pretty much any night I feel like it. I sure miss that place. Some nights the smell was literally like a physical force, lol, but that was only outside (and down 80' or so underground in one of the "tunnels" where we'd occasionally go to smoke a gram or two if he was worried that his boss might have reason to stop by), and the lab was fully stocked... easily well over $100K just in meters, tools, ovens, centrifuges, and miscellenous goodies, and then there were the chemicals including adjusters, acids many & varied, and... many other things just waiting to bring out the little boy in every mad scientist
. It was a great place to make hash oil, too. And there was a scale that almost felt like a crime to use. Well, I suppose it was, come to think of it, lol. But I mean because it was so accurate. They had EC meters (four or five of them, IIRC), of course. But since so many of the things that they measured there were... organic in nature, they mostly measured total dissolved solids by taking a sample, flash-heating it until only a very tiny amount of residue was left, and then actually weighing the stuff. Parts per million? No problem, heh... This thing was so accurate that it sat in a glass case, on a granite table that weighed as much as a small automobile, on four special "disturbance-minimizing" pads, on a solid concrete floor, 35' away from anything else - and you could still cause the measurement to fluctuate just by (almost literally) farting around clear on the other side of the lab, it read out to that many decimal places. I sometimes think that scale was capable of measuring someone's thoughts 
. Boy... I really, really miss that lab. I was actually thinking about trying to get myself hired there - after all, when my buddy first started working there, it seemed like he called me two or three times/night asking me how to do something or other because he hadn't made it through the three-foot stack of manuals/books they gave him to digest yet :rolleyes3 - but then he quit to go work somewhere else and he let everyone from the newest hire all the way up to the mayor of the city know exactly what he thought of them in no uncertain terms. Oh, and he filed a rather in-depth report with the EPA, too, which cost the city a few million dollars since they were still acting like it was 1950 when it came to treating the area's wastewater (plus just being shoddy and lazy). So, you know... there went my reference, and the job market here is such that every time someone so much as hears a rumor that they might be hiring another employee in the next 12 months there are two or three thousand applicants (and I have NO certification or formal training - just a little common sense, 40+ years of reading everything I could get my hands on (some small portion of which I actually remember), and maybe a thing or two I've learned... growing cannabis. Alas, I cannot put that on a résumé). Besides, I think they're hair-testing now, where before they were barely even doing random yearly urine tests, just checking potential new hires and those who screwed up monumentally on the job. And they weren't even all that consistent on the latter - once, my buddy called me all in a panic, came and got me, took me back to see if I could help him straighten things out... whereupon I discover that he somehow managed to chlorinate a gigantic tank full of microscopic life ("digesters"), lol. I think he ended up having to file paperwork over that one due to it skewing everyone's readings up for two or three weeks.
Err... I can't remember what my point was. <SHRUGS> It's good to have a friend that works in a "crap factory," maybe? IDK... But I'm glad I finally found your other journal. Until this morning, I hadn't realized that you had more than just the one. Be well, stay cool, and grow big, lol.
A lot of people seem to like to keep upping the nutrients until they see burning, then back the levels down only slightly. I have been guilty of this, as well. But at some point I started wondering if that was why most folks seem to feel the need to flush their plants so thoroughly, lol. Flushing... is something that they do not experience when grown outdoors in their natural environment. In better times, some of the better tasting cannabis that I grew - and in DWC hydroponic reservoirs, lol - only got slight flushing, if at all. But those plants... I saw leaf yellowing (and leaf drop) by harvest time. It was like... Well, I was busy - and lazy - and wasn't pushing the girls. Plus, it was at a time when I always had more cannabis than I could seem to get rid of (THAT is just a fading memory...). It's funny: Some of the times when I put forth the least amount of effort was when the plants seemed to reward me the most. Go figure.
Speaking of hydroponics, I would often mix at a certain pH. Then I would let the plants slowly change it (by their consumption of nutrients), and after it had changed a bit, I'd add in some more (flowering) nutrients, which would put the pH right back where it started. I might stretch a reservoir past the week that I had originally intended, maybe double the time that way, sometimes adding more nutrients, sometimes adding water. I guess that'd be tough now without meters :rolleyes3 . And it wasn't really relevant when I had LARGE plants in hot conditions under strong "wind" - they might consume/transpire 15, even 20 gallons of water in 24 hours. But I have been thinking about throwing some clones in two-liter bottles (what folks call "hempy" these days) - which as you know, depending on the medium, is a form of passive hydroponics. And I am wondering if it might be of any benefit if I was to try to mimic that gentle pH change over time manually, by alternating (slightly) the pH of what I pour into the bottles. Do you have any thoughts/opinions on such an idea?
BtW, the PPM levels that you mentioned... do they count what is already in your water supply (or do you use RO/distilled/etc.)? IIRC, my tap water is loaded, over 300 PPM (mostly calcium, I think, so I could probably get by with Epsom salt in lieu of a Cal-Mag product, I expect). Seems like its pH was not great, either, something like 8.1 last time I checked which, unfortunately, was about three years ago, so I have no idea now. I still have not managed to find a way to budget a new probe for my pH pen (and I am only hoping that the meter, itself, is still fine) and by friend no longer works at a local wastewater treatment plant - so I do not have the luxury of "taking over" its lab pretty much any night I feel like it. I sure miss that place. Some nights the smell was literally like a physical force, lol, but that was only outside (and down 80' or so underground in one of the "tunnels" where we'd occasionally go to smoke a gram or two if he was worried that his boss might have reason to stop by), and the lab was fully stocked... easily well over $100K just in meters, tools, ovens, centrifuges, and miscellenous goodies, and then there were the chemicals including adjusters, acids many & varied, and... many other things just waiting to bring out the little boy in every mad scientist
. It was a great place to make hash oil, too. And there was a scale that almost felt like a crime to use. Well, I suppose it was, come to think of it, lol. But I mean because it was so accurate. They had EC meters (four or five of them, IIRC), of course. But since so many of the things that they measured there were... organic in nature, they mostly measured total dissolved solids by taking a sample, flash-heating it until only a very tiny amount of residue was left, and then actually weighing the stuff. Parts per million? No problem, heh... This thing was so accurate that it sat in a glass case, on a granite table that weighed as much as a small automobile, on four special "disturbance-minimizing" pads, on a solid concrete floor, 35' away from anything else - and you could still cause the measurement to fluctuate just by (almost literally) farting around clear on the other side of the lab, it read out to that many decimal places. I sometimes think that scale was capable of measuring someone's thoughts . Boy... I really, really miss that lab. I was actually thinking about trying to get myself hired there - after all, when my buddy first started working there, it seemed like he called me two or three times/night asking me how to do something or other because he hadn't made it through the three-foot stack of manuals/books they gave him to digest yet :rolleyes3 - but then he quit to go work somewhere else and he let everyone from the newest hire all the way up to the mayor of the city know exactly what he thought of them in no uncertain terms. Oh, and he filed a rather in-depth report with the EPA, too, which cost the city a few million dollars since they were still acting like it was 1950 when it came to treating the area's wastewater (plus just being shoddy and lazy). So, you know... there went my reference, and the job market here is such that every time someone so much as hears a rumor that they might be hiring another employee in the next 12 months there are two or three thousand applicants (and I have NO certification or formal training - just a little common sense, 40+ years of reading everything I could get my hands on (some small portion of which I actually remember), and maybe a thing or two I've learned... growing cannabis. Alas, I cannot put that on a résumé). Besides, I think they're hair-testing now, where before they were barely even doing random yearly urine tests, just checking potential new hires and those who screwed up monumentally on the job. And they weren't even all that consistent on the latter - once, my buddy called me all in a panic, came and got me, took me back to see if I could help him straighten things out... whereupon I discover that he somehow managed to chlorinate a gigantic tank full of microscopic life ("digesters"), lol. I think he ended up having to file paperwork over that one due to it skewing everyone's readings up for two or three weeks.Err... I can't remember what my point was. <SHRUGS> It's good to have a friend that works in a "crap factory," maybe? IDK... But I'm glad I finally found your other journal. Until this morning, I hadn't realized that you had more than just the one. Be well, stay cool, and grow big, lol.
. "my perfect coco run". Let's see 
