DNA Genetics, Sorbet Stash, 1000W In Coco, The Mr Canuck Way

[Aero808]

Oxy cloner seriously upped my cloning game. That and rapid rooters with a tray, dome, and heat mat. Cloning is the way to go man. A bunch of identical plants in a SCROG will be the way to go.

For sure. The oxycloner made things way easier for me. This is my first try growing out clones. I was thinking about topping them, but the alternating nodes threw me off. I had no idea where to cut em.

I don't have a ton of headroom in my tent and want to finish at around 30 inches next time.

 

[Aero808]

Day 9 of flowering. I'm still about 18 inches from the light after Supercropping the last of the 4 plants today.Here is before and after tucking and supercropping.

 

[Aero808]

Day 12 of flower. I've started cleaning things up below the net and have supercropped again. Things aren't as out of control as my previous sour diesel grow, but I definitely need to alter my setup at some point to gain more headroom.

For now I'll flower the next batch of clones at 10 inches and see how things go. I should have flipped about a week sooner methinks.

 

[Aero808]

Day 15 of flower and I'm starting to see preflowers. This strain is pretty stretchy and I'll likely need to do some more super cropping soon. My canopy really filled in nicely, but this lack of headroom is becoming a recurring problem. Switching to LED's would give me another much needed foot... Might have to go that route soon.

 

[Aero808]

Day 19 of flower and things are completely overgrown. The sorbet stash has stretched way more than anticipated. I'm supercropping daily. Hoping everything doesn't wind up light bleached and foxtailed on me. I'm going to flower the next batch of clones at 6 inches tall and hope for the best.

 

[Aero808]

Should I turn the intensity down on the ballast? I can run it as low as 600w. What would you do?

 

[Aero808]

Well, I've turned it down to 750w in hopes of not frying these lanky buggers. I've been reading about causes of stretch and the more I read, the more I think I need to go LED. Might pick up a couple of Electric Sky es300's in the near future and gift my existing setup to my dad. This is two grows in a row that things have been totally out of control when it comes to stretching. Environment and light spectrum have got to be part of the problem

 

[Aero808]

Day 27 of flower. The supercropping is still a daily thing, but the stretch seems to have stopped.

Not sure if anyone is even reading or seeing this... but I'm going to keep posting to keep a record for myself. Feeling left out over here.

 

[OBCityBudz]

Hey man!

I’d hate for you to feel lonely or left out so I will keep you some company

I managed to stumble upon your profile through another thread about mr. canuks grow method. Saw you were attempting the same and Planned on documenting your grow. Checked out your thread and you started your grow from seed in October just like I did! Read your entire thread and your plants seem to have been doing a lot better than mine!

I germinated 2 seeds and they started out with a reeeeeally slow start. After a month they looked like they were maybe 2 weeks old. Very slow and stunted growth.

Mistake #1:
TLDR: leaving cover on tap water while trying to dechlorinate because cats.

I had made a 5gal batch of dechlorinated tap water but messed up and it likely wasn’t dechlorinated...I have a cat and a kitten so I covered the bucket so they didn’t mess around with the water. I have a couple pumps running in the water to help evaporate the chlorine as well as for bubble teas. There was a small gap where the hoses were running out, but I have a feeling that perhaps a lot of the chlorine was staying in the bucket. Now I do not cover the bucket for the initial 24h out of tap

Mistake #2:
TLDR: mixed molasses and seaweed to 5 gal batch, ph’d initially before first use but not again for subsequent uses.

After I made this batch of 5gal I ph’d it somewhere between 6.5-6.8 like he said in his older videos (in a newer one he actually said 6.0-6.5 and after watching so many of his vids saying 6.5-6.8 I was shocked!! In his must current vids he switched to a Gaia green living soil blend) I then added organic molasses and seaweed extract to the water. The next time I watered I figured I had already ph’d it, so I’m good to go! I kept watering from the same batch without rechecking the ph. Big issue when you add the molasses and seaweed extract!! It got more and more acidic every day. And when they are seedling they don’t feed very much so I had that water for quite a while. Not only was the pH an issue I feel like the bacteria was also bad for the microbial life in the coco since it sat around for so long. After I ran out of that batch I made another one, kept the cover off but I mixed the solution again and started phing with every watering. Once that batch was gone I started to only mix what I was using with molasses and seaweed that way my water remained slightly basic until I added the molasses and seaweed extract at which point it would go slightly acidic (usually around 5.8-6.0 range). Then I’d ph it up to 6.5-6.8 and water my plants. This seemed to help as the solution was fresher and didn’t give bacteria time to fester. Also I used the ph the entire bucket then take whatever I needed. I feel like that was a waste of ph adjuster and likely adding more unnecessary crap into the water. Now I take what I need and then ph that. Much easier to adjust with lesser quantities

Mistake #3:
TLDR: Plants in pool of water runoff

Not elevating my pots out of their tray enough. I bought one nice elevated tray that allows water to drip down into a pan below. I also bought a bunch of cheap plastic pans with several feet that are hollow for water collection. I used the nice tray/pan for when they were in smaller pots but once I transplanted into 5gal pots I put them on the cheap Walmart ones because they couldn’t both fit on the nice tray I have. Problem is that when there was a lot of run off the water would pool in the tray and the plants were sitting in the water until it evaporated as the hollow feet were not near enough to maintain the runoff. So I put one plant on the nice tray/pan and as for the other I took one shitty Walmart pan and I cut grooves in all of the feet then I put that on top of another pan so that the water would drip into the top pan and then subsequently drip down into the pan below leaving the top pan relatively try. Having. The pots sit water I feel is definitely not healthy for the roots, potentially even salt buildup? I actually just did this recently so I am hoping that things will help change things.

Mistake #4
I was scared of over watering cause you hear so much about it. But since I am growing in coco I feel like perhaps I wasn’t watering enough, I would wait until the first few inches were dry. After reading more about coco it seems like you should water more often. I am now watering daily or every other day, I only let the top of the coco dry out a bit.

So back to a month old from seed and growth was slowly chugging along and I eventually managed to get it going a bit. I had some twisty leaves which after googling made me think about ph problems. this is what made me realize mistake #2. I checked my ph of my batch of water with molasses and seaweed and the ph was in the 4’s. fixed that and growth seemed to increase slightly. I was still having. Problems though so I did some more looking around and the closest thing I could find was a magnesium deficiency. So I went out and bought some Epsom salts and sure enough that seemed to improve it. Finally my plant was seeming to be like all those grow videos I was watching. Daily visible growth, yes!!
Once that seemed fixed I ran into some phosphorous problems which I am currently dealing with (purpleish stems and yellowing of leaves eventually turning brown in big blotches). This could have came from waiting too long to top dress again as I waited a month maybe a few days more to top dress a second time. I also added some bat guano (mineralized phosphate) for a higher phosphorous content as both my girls were clearly needing it! This was actually only a few days ago so I’m hoping this will get better, they haven’t gotten much worse yet at least!!

I would love to have these girls in flower but I have been struggling with health and I want them to be healthy before I put them into flower andddd I also am leaving on vacation from feb 25 to March 3 and I need to find someone to take care of my baby’s while I’m away!! I figure it would be easier for someone with even less knowledge than me to watch them in veg than flower ya know?!

Sorry for the long response! Hope you’re not feeling lonely any more

 

[Aero808]

Heya OB! Thanks for chiming in!

It looks like you're doing a great job of tracking things, and I'm sure that things will start to look up for you soon.

Good call on the small batches of molasses and seaweed extract. I find it much easier to mix seaweed extract up in a 1 gallon container and use it all at once. That way you don't have the bacterial or PH issues. I just give the container a good rinse with tap water until it's needed again. I was only using seaweed extract once per week during my last grow. I haven't used it at all since switching over to the autopots, it could clog them up and wind up in a disaster for sure. I won't be using molasses this go either for the same reason. I may pick up some kind of hydro friendly concoction like carboload, etc. Remains to be seen.

Adding a layer of hydroton clay balls to the bottom of your containers will help with drainage, and also help if you accidentally have the pots sitting in a little bit of water. A little tip I picked up from the autopot forums. The bottom of my pots are sitting in water all of the time, no worries!

I noticed a big difference in growth rates when I started watering every day. I had a routine set where I would water everything as soon as the lights turned on last grow. Now that I'm using autopots, I just check on them and supercrop, etc when the lights come on. The switch to the autopots has saved me a ton of time.

I'm running Advanced Nutrition's PH Pefect 3 part right now. I figured out pretty early that Mr. Canuk's method wouldn't work at all using autopots. The clones vegged with the Gaia Green nutes, and then were switched over to synthetic at 1/3 strength during flower. Seem to be doing ok... I've been adding calmag at full strength too. A little hydrogen peroxide every 3 days to keep the res clean.

I appreciate the response!

 

[Aero808]

On a side note, I'm having a friend come over with some industrial zipties tomorrow. I'm going to strap this light fixture right to the tent poles and get another 5 inches of headroom. Hoping it's enough to get me through flowering without nuking the poor girls.

 

[OBCityBudz]

I started tracking this grow in my handy little grow book but i stopped being diligent with it so I don't have any records for the last couple months. But i still have a pretty good hold on what has gone down so far. Next grow maybe I will post a journal on here, seems like it could be good fun if you get a bit of a following!

I am no longer watering with molasses and seaweed extract every time either. I am going to only be doing it once a week (likely on Mondays) for the remainder of this grow and likely moving forward! I kept on having one problem after another so i kinda sorta figured that if the solution goes acidic very quickly (within a day or so) and i keep adding more and more to the plants that the coco pH is likely decreasing as well just like the solution does. So now hopefully with doing just plain ole water between seaweed and molasses feedings it will allow the pH to level out in the root zone and thus reduce some problems that i am having.

I was looking into autopots a little bit but they are quite expensive, not sure if i wanna spend that much money on them at this point. I just spent $1000 for the HLG 600H in december so that was my toy for now. are you liking the autopots then i take it?

By the looks of it those 5" will go a long way for you! I have a bunch of industrial zip ties from work! I grabbed a whole bunch for the purpose of hanging stuff in my grow tent as well. They are 2ft long and 1/4 inch wide, I'm currently hanging my inline fan with them as i cant mount it inside my tent.

My plants are definitely starting to look better today, one plant has always struggled more than the other but that one is finally coming around and getting its normal colour back. About to water them again right now!

 

[Aero808]

I am a big fan of the autopots. Anything that makes things easier is a win in my books. How do you like that HLG600H? Did you do any grows with HID bulbs before getting it? I'm super curious about QB's

 

[MrO]

Your previous journal is what gave me the courage to also attempt my first grow with this method. My seedling popped up 5 days ago. I'll definitely be following, please keep the posts coming!

 

[OBCityBudz]

So far so good with the HLG, tbh this is my first grow ever so i had a cheap blurple light from amazon and it just wasnt gonna cut it for flower so i did a bunch of research and the quantum boards seem to be the way to go these days. I am hoping this is a hobby that i will stick with so i figured that i would invest in a good light! I actually ended up researching automatic irrigation systems the last couple days and i bit the bullet and bought a bunch of stuff so i am actually going to hook up an irrigation system for my grow tent! this way i can hopefully dial it in before my trip on the 25th and i wont have to worry about someone watering it for me while i am gone! (i just need to worry about someone feeding my cats)

 

[Aero808]

Hi MrO, thanks for saying hello. Let me know if you start a journal of your own and I'll follow you.

OBCity - I've been looking at the greensunshine company's 300's, a couple of them would flower my 4x4 nicely. My nighttime temps are around 19c, but it shoots up to 28 when the lights come on. I've read that plants stretch when there is too wide a difference between the day and night temps. That HLG probably runs a lot cooler than my setup.

My buddy came and helped me out with those zipties. I only had to cut out a couple of buds off that were bleached. I have about 9 inches between the bulb and canopy now, not perfect, but a big improvement for sure.I still have the light dialed down to 750.

 

[OBCityBudz]

I also looked into the es300’s because of course my boy mr canucks grow was using them. I looked at the specs and such and I saw that I’d need 2 of them in my 4x4 for flower and since they are nearly $900CAD each I wasn’t ready to drop over 2K on lights already.
The QBs easily flower a 4x4 and I got it on a bit of a sale (might still be reduced price, haven’t checked; update checked and it is indeed still reduced in price although in USD it converts to around the same cost) for around the same cost as 1 es300 so it was a no brainer. Plus the Samsung lm301b diodes are top shelf and one of the most efficient LEDs on the market right now.
With my old light I had my plants 12” or less away from the light so it got the energy it needed. My temp would dip down into the mid 60’s at night and high 60’s to low 70’s during the day. I basically always had my space heater running for a few hours at a time to get the temps up and around 75. Then comes the HLG and at first I didn’t put a fan above the heat sink and my tent got to over 80F the first day! I didn’t want it to be quiiite so hot in there so I moved a fan to circulate air above the light and now it stays perfectly cool and my tent is in the mid to high 70’s when the light is on. Still dips into the high 60s at night but I use the space heater if it gets too low.
Also the hlg is like maybe 6 inches thick? And most of that is attributed to the fact that I mounted the driver on the heat sink. You could mount it remotely which would make the light only maybe 2 inches thick which would definitely maximize your height in your tent!
hopefully your girls are done stretching and they stay that far from the lights because I feel even at that distance you are still playing a dangerous game! It’s still sad you had to chop a few buds off because those were still likely your leading colas which would put on some serious mass!!

 

[Aero808]

Chopping buds is always heartbreaking. I'm hoping that this is the last time I deal with these height issues... Sounds like the LED's would solve my temperature issues. I bet the spectrum would help a lot in preventing stretch too.

I still have a good 4-5 weeks to go in flower, and I might buy those es300's for the next round. They do cost a pretty penny, but the 3 year warranty justifies things in my mind. I should be able to use them for a solid 10-15 years too. I'd be looking at a little over 1700 bucks if I buy them directly from Amazon. We'll see what the tax man says come March. I should have a pretty sweet return coming this year.

 

[OBCityBudz]

I think we all grow so we CAN chop buds, it’s the tossing of buds that’s the sad part haha. The LEDs would likely stabilize your temps a lot better for sure, wouldn’t have as big of fluctuations as they don’t run nearly as hot from what I’ve gathered.

yikes! I probably spent right around $1000 when it was all said and done for my light. I thought I was crazy for spending that much especially being a Noob! But I tend to go big when I do things haha. fully commit right?! That’s the great thing about LEDs is they have a really long life span (and thank god too considering how much we pay for these suckers!!)

I am deeply scared for this years tax return. I did some independent contracting work for a lot of last year and got a job for a company in September for 9 months not paying tax vs 3 months paying tax...probably gonna awe a ton and I am not looking forward to that one bit

 

[Aero808]

Yikes, you might owe a bit. Sounds like you're an American though, at least you aren't taxed as highly as us poor Canadian folks. I pay 35% of my income right from the get go, then get taxed for everything under the sun with what I spend. They take at least half of my income the dirty buggers. Free healthcare? haha

My province offers a graduate retention program, so I get a decent chunk back the first 5 years after graduating so long as I stay here.