Fools Rush In: Newbie's Adventures In Suboptimal Conditions

[syenite]

She has shot up quite a bit hasn’t she?
I like the way your Adaptabox™ is so adaptable. Well done, mate.

Churr DD! Yeah I'm happy I didn't leave her any longer before flipping. I didn't think she would be THIS stretchy. Probably not the full 200% stretch, but close.

She looks so pretty Sy

Thanks Tra!! She's gotten less symmetrical as she's gone on, but what can I say? She's a strong, independent woman! Proud of her.

Although getting a bit bushy so I gave her a little haircut.

She's looking good, Sy!

Don't ya love it when a plan works out!

Don't freak out if you overwater a seedling, getting rid of that excess water is pretty easy- You'll need another pot the same size as the one the seedling is in- line that pot with a double layer of paper towels, then stuff the seedling pot in there- it should be a tight fit...
Give it a half an hour or so in there- the paper towels will be soaking wet when you pull the pot out- then you do it again, continuing until the paper towels stay dry.
The paper towels will wick all that excess water out of the seedling pot- when they stop wicking out the water, the pot is dry enough...

Oh man! Thank you so much Carc. Invaluable tips from you and @InTheShed. Never thought of either approach.

Hi Sye!
Everything looks great. Good luck with the RH. I ended up getting a 70 pint unit with an auto drain which made it handy. Works well for my size room.

Thank you Mr S!!!

I'm looking at the equivalent 22-27L dehumidifiers here. Pricey but in the scheme of things will be a crucial long-term investment. We're officially in Spring now so wonder if I can afford to wait for the inevitable off-season discounts/promos...

 

[syenite]

Baby BK overwatering situation update: Perched water table

This morning I woke up to a still somewhat-droopy BK. I weighed her and she'd been losing a significant amount of water each day. So why is she still droopy?

Then something struck me. I remembered something I learnt earlier about the perched water table in containers (although the same principles do apply for ground water tables).

No matter how big the container is, there will be a zone of saturation at the bottom of it. More importantly, this zone of saturation (the "perched water table") takes up the same height regardless of the size of the container!

(Source: this Stackexchange post)

So by having Baby BK in such a small container, a good portion of her roots are likely to be sitting in the perched water table. This would explain why she always looks overwatered.

The fact of the perched water table also explains why adding coarse material (hydroton, clay pebbles, etc.) to the bottom of your container to improve drainage doesn't work. Not only does water have a hard time moving from fine soil material to/through coarse material (thanks Linda Chalker-Scott), adding this layer of coarse material actually raises the perched water table, meaning that the plant's roots have less of the unsaturated zone to inhabit, and, again, is likely to be partially submerged in the saturated zone/perched water table.

This video illustrates the problem very well:

This resolves my confusion about Baby BK. My last round of seedlings were up-potted from/with their jiffy pellets as soon as they popped, into much larger containers (3-4 times the size) than the one I'm using now. Other than that, my approach to fertigating hadn't changed, so I was confused as to why I was seeing so much drooping.

Mystery solved. Will up-pot when she wakes up in a couple of hours!

 

[InTheShed]

Damn that thing has stretched . Nice rework on the lighting!

I did do something possibly ill-advised.

I'd say there's nothing wrong with 80ºF on the heat mat. That's where I do all my germination and cloning. And excellent info on the saturation zone! I look forward to the results of the up-pot!

 

[syenite]

Damn that thing has stretched . Nice rework on the lighting!

I'd say there's nothing wrong with 80ºF on the heat mat. That's where I do all my germination and cloning. And excellent info on the saturation zone! I look forward to the results of the up-pot!

Hey thanks Shed! Haha I was this close to gambling on the vertical height/when to flip, and I'm glad I decided to flip at the halfway point. Based on how the plant was growing in veg, I did not expect this. A good lesson for me.

Well, here's the answer. No wonder she looked like she was suffocating all the time. She was. Poor girl.

Here's me cradling her very gingerly. I'm happy at least that she's had such vigorous root growth!

She's gone from mouldy basement squat to a 2-floor modernist apartment in downtown Manhattan:

 

[InTheShed]

:nice:

 

[Bionic Chronic NZ]

Hey thanks Shed! Haha I was this close to gambling on the vertical height/when to flip, and I'm glad I decided to flip at the halfway point. Based on how the plant was growing in veg, I did not expect this. A good lesson for me.

Well, here's the answer. No wonder she looked like she was suffocating all the time. She was. Poor girl.

Here's me cradling her very gingerly. I'm happy at least that she's had such vigorous root growth!

She's gone from mouldy basement squat to a 2-floor modernist apartment in downtown Manhattan:

She's got a lovely clean home and your big girl did stretch aye.... looking awesome in here bruv!

 

[syenite]

Desert Sunday silhouette session (day 14 of 12-12)

A satisfying day in the garden all in all. After ensuring BK was happy in her new home, I moved onto Desert.

Not a lot to do here. Removed a bunch of older fan leaves, especially the ones growing inwards, opening up the secondary growth and bud sites to the light.

Also wanted to get a good silhouette shot to really highlight (lowlight?) her structure.

Hope the weekend has gone well for you all! Stay safe.

 

[InTheShed]

Will you be leaving the larf or stripping the lower buds?

 

[syenite]

Will you be leaving the larf or stripping the lower buds?

Great question. Thanks so much! I've been wondering about this too. Given the lights, I'm not sure what principle to follow. I would love your feedback!

Going by the principle of vertical height doesn't seem to make sense given the vertical canopy and lighting.

Going by the principle of exposure, i.e. the sites furthest from the light, then almost all the sites have good exposure?

Going by the principle of size (of development of sites), then the lowest pair of branches have the most poorly developed sites.

TBH, there's a part of me that's tempted to leave them all just to see what happens/gather maximum information.

 

[syenite]

A related, follow-up question is more of a review question.

Given the state of the secondary growth at this point, nearing the end of stretch, should I have defoliated earlier, so as to have had them more exposed and more developed by this point?

I don't really know how much more they are going to grow.

 

[InTheShed]

Since you have such distinct branches, you could easily strip some and leave some and see which ones produce more weight in the end. My feeling is that the apical buds should be getting the most energy from the plant, and the lowest stuff will never amount to much anyway, so why allow the plant to try to produce flowers down there.

I don't think light penetration is of great importance here given the side lighting and the lack of foliage, and I certainly would not be taking off any fan leaves at this point, wherever they fall on the plant.

 

[syenite]

Since you have such distinct branches, you could easily strip some and leave some and see which ones produce more weight in the end. My feeling is that the apical buds should be getting the most energy from the plant, and the lowest stuff will never amount to much anyway, so why allow the plant to try to produce flowers down there.

I don't think light penetration is of great importance here given the side lighting and the lack of foliage, and I certainly would not be taking off any fan leaves at this point, wherever they fall on the plant.

Fascinating.

All of this highlights an uncertainty I've been carrying.

When considering what might be larf, I always took it to be a function of light penetration. When I've read about lollipopping, the rationale always seemed to be that the lower bud sites don't get sufficient light exposure, and therefore never develop well. I therefore assumed that by preserving light exposure all up and down the plant, that I would get less larf.

But based on what I've seen and what you're saying here, it seems like apical dominance/priority trumps light exposure in bud site development.

Put differently, light exposure is necessary but not sufficient for good bud development? The lowest parts of the plant will be larfy no matter what?

 

[InTheShed]

The lowest parts of the plant will be larfy no matter what?

Absolutely. I grow in the sun with some of the best light penetration you can get, and I get larf down low if I don't take it off. Here is my Carnival harvest:

20200823_012000 Carnival harvest (and DDA).jpg

• InTheShed
• Aug 23, 2020
• chop

Carnival harvest - bones, flip day 59, total 170 days
also DDA harvest, day 66

If you look at the top strings, you can see the apical colas. As you move down you can see the lower branch harvests, and if you look at any one of those you can see the biggest bud is the one at the end, getting smaller as they get further from the end of the branch.

Here is a shot of the undercarriage after I did the post-stretch thinning:

#nolarf!

 

[syenite]

Absolutely. I grow in the sun with some of the best light penetration you can get, and I get larf down low if I don't take it off. Here is my Carnival harvest:

If you look at the top strings, you can see the apical colas. As you move down you can see the lower branch harvests, and if you look at any one of those you can see the biggest bud is the one at the end, getting smaller as they get further from the end of the branch.

Here is a shot of the undercarriage after I did the post-stretch thinning:
#nolarf!

Thanks so much Shed! I appreciate it. I will probably do what you suggested and clear some lower areas entirely, and leave some others as an experiment. It will be good to have a point of reference for the different vertical "levels" or "slices", and ultimately the point past which nothing should be kept at all!

 

[syenite]

Baby BK overwatering update

So I was just expressing my exasperation to @DonkeyDick...

After up-potting, and seemingly letting the seedling dry out, it perked up a little one day, and then.... just continued to droop. In fact, it started to droop even worse. And it seemed to stop drinking water.

On Sunday, after up-potting, its weight (plant + pot) was 400g. The mix was lightly watered/moistened, but not saturated.

On Monday, its weight had dropped to 368g. It also looked perkier. I was happy! (Loss: 32g)

Tuesday, its weight was 360g in the morning, and then 350g at night. It looked droopy again, similar droop to when it was overwatered. (Loss: 18g)

This morning, its weight was 344g. And this afternoon, it's at 340g. Droopy as hell. Almost completely folded on itself. (Loss: 10g)

I then fertigated today, not quite to run-off but close, to 450g. (+110g)

I hope I drew the right conclusion - that it had actually dried out. If not........ I just don't understand!

 

[syenite]

Well, if it continues to be droopy at the end of the night/early tomorrow, I'll know that I have once again waterboarded the poor soul.....

 

[VetSmoke85]

That's frustrating. Hope it starts playing ball soon.

 

[DonkeyDick]

I’ve just been reading about the bubba kush. Mate! Crossing my fingers, toes, eyes and kidneys for you.

 

[syenite]

She's looking better this morning already, folks!

Thanks for the well wishes. She received your kindness through the ether!

... and also she received a bamboo skewer to the edges of the original root zone.

This is a bit of a deja vu from my last generation of seedlings:

I have a suspicion that the little one is root bound within the peat pellet that's embedded in the soil. You can actually see the darker region in the photo that indicates the peat pellet.

I had a closer look and I could actually see some of its roots peeking just above the surface of the soil. This further reinforces the possibility of a lack of oxygen @FelipeBlu !

I did something. Possibly ill-advised. Remembered some discussions about "root-coring", so I poked a few holes straight down through the original root ball. Partly to provide some air channels and partly to break up the peat pellet. We'll see what happens.

There are two parts to this problem.

The first I already mentioned, leaving seedlings too long in either tiny pots or jiffy pellets. My theory is that the combination of the tiny volume and the fact of the perched water table can quickly result in the seedling getting rootbound, sitting in water and suffocating.

The second part has to do with a failed merging of the original rootzone and the new mix post-transplant. Is this a thing that actually happens, or have I just been impatient? Breaking up the edge of the original root zone with a bamboo skewer seems to have worked twice now.

Will get a photo series up later today or early tomorrow.

 

[Stunger]

That's great she's looking better!