Grow Room for Volksgarden

[dfw-guy]

Video is awesome man, keep it up! BTW Britta filter doesn't do anything for the plants. If you're using tap then you just need to let the water sit, uncovered, for at least 24 hours. That will let the chlorine in the water evaporate. Chlorine is bad because it kills the microbes in the nutrients, that is unless your using synthetic nutrients that is. But I can't imagine chlorine being good for the plants in any way.

 

[leonardo]

Really? Do you think the chlorine would evaporate if I filled one gallon jugs with filtered water and just left the caps off?

 

[dfw-guy]

Ya that should work. Check out this thread, it's where I got my info from.
What is the best type of water to start with?

 

[leonardo]

Thanks dfw-guy, it cant hurt to have the water sit for a day, that's what I'll start doing. Still going to filter since it cuts down on the PPM until I can afford to upgrade to RO early next year.

 

[dfw-guy]

Having an at home reverse osmosis filter would be the best possible option for those who can afford it. Walmart and other stores alike usually have R/O units which let you fill up your water containers for just 34 cents a gallon. Not a bad deal imo when distilled is twice the price.
But ya you should be fine with tap water, lots of people use it. Just be sure to let it sit and your golden

 

[Damian Thorn]

id keep those plants..jsut trim them back or lts...and when your ready to flower your volks throw those near the base of the wheel..the light will flow oever....\
and as for your water..leaving the caps open will eventually clear out some of the water will take a day or tooo but if you want it down with in a few hours use a 5 gallon bucket or a 20 gallon tote and a air pump and airstone....speeds up the evaporation of chlorine greatly

 

[leonardo]

A grocery store 20 minutes away has one of those machines and I would like to do that, but I don't have big 5 gallon jugs and they were like 30 bucks at kmart. I do have 4 one gallon containers, maybe I'll buy a few more and just refill them whenever I'm out that way.

Thanks Omenman, I never thought about flowering them near the volksgarden, something to think about. Not sure how to prune them yet either, any good sources on that that you would recommend?

Also, I keep forgetting to mention in the videos that I have an ozone generator with a tube and an air stone to clean water to clean fruit and other stuff. Do you think it would be good or bad to treat the water with it? Or use the timer in the tent? It's supposed to get rid of smells and fungus and mildew I think, but I know too much O3 is bad for plants so I've been holding off. Anyone have suggestions on how I can throw that into the mix?

 

[WheeloFortune]

i have an ozone generator, i don't use it. if i did i would use it outside the tent to curb smell, but not harm the pants at all.

 

[Keith Lake]

I love the video updates personally.
__________________________
On the chlorine question; it's the free chlorine that's does the damage to plants (and coliforms). It's highly reactive and looks to bind with things, mostly ammonia to make chloramines. This highly reactive tendency is partly what makes it so effective as a disinfectant.

It doesn't take too long for the free chlorine concentration in tap water to convert to less reactive (less harmful) species

i.e. overnight sounds about right.
_________________________
On the extra plants question; easy for me to say from my couch, but grow em out man. If you're under the limit and the wheel isn't there yet - why not grow em. Get some of the learning curve out of the way and have some bud to show for it. You might find yourself damn happy that you're smoking your own while waiting for the wheel to finish up. Ask WOF; he's found himself in that pickle once or twice

 

[leonardo]

OK the videos will continue and I'll do another one this week, but if you like them you've got to give them a 5 star rating!

So after watering today the GDP's look gorgeous and green and they're consuming more water everyday. The PPM reading in the saucers was below 1000 for the first time, so the flush must have been a great success. The Limes on the other hand are getting huge and growing at an angle so they're all over the place and I'm starting to run out of space. So I'm thinking of getting rid of them or maybe keeping two to flower next to the volksgarden and/or use as cloning practice. Does anyone else have any advice or suggestions?

By the end of the week I want to have a solid plan going forward and a detailed shopping list of everything I will need and how much it will cost, so I can decide weather I can afford to get the Volksgarden early and fill it up the first week of October, or to flower these Limes and a couple GDP's and put off the first Volksgarden run until late November, as originally planned. I think I'm really close, but I may be a few hundred bucks off. I'm going to need everyone's help deciding what else I need to buy and how to pull this off. Thanks in advance!

 

[Keith Lake]

If you insist 5-star vote made

 

[WheeloFortune]

drive out to the country, walk somewhere secluded, and put the plants you dont want outside. go back in a couple of months and see if they are still there?

i would clone the plants you have 15-20 times. see how many you can get to root. then grow all of them out to support the number of clones you need to fill the volks. by the time you are ready to do the big clone, it will be end of october. get the volks and clone the hundred clones. flower those and some of the moms by supplemental light, keep a couple in veg to clone again a week or so before four first run finishes.

this will take you to christmas untill you have anything to smoke, but it will get you an the fast track to be pulling over a lb. easy every two months.

OR

clone a bunch from the bottom branches of what you have, and in a week or so, flower what you have and veg the clones. then you have smoke by thanksgiving and will be ready for the volks, which could be done by new years.

you dont need much more. the volks, light (ballast, bulb, socket and holder), res, cloning stuff, and 80 3" RW cubes. could be done for $1400 if you order online to make it cheaper.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Britta filter doesn't do anything for the plants.

I know it's a long way from a good RO setup, but the one on my kitchen faucet came with a paper that states that it removes the following:
ANSI/NSF Standard 53 - Health Effects

• Asbestos >99.7%
• Lead 99%
• Cysts 99.99%
• Alachlor 99%
• Atrazine >92%
• Benzene 96%
• Carbofuran 91%
• Carbon tetrachloride 97%
• Chlordane 97%
• Chlorobenzene 99.9%
• o-Dichlorobenzene 99.9%
• 2,4-D 99.8%
• Endrin 99%
• Ethylbenzene >99.9%
• Heptachlor epoxide >95%
• Lindane 99%
• Methoxychlor 97%
• Simazine >98%
• Styrene >99.9%
• Tetrachloroethylene >97%
• Toulene 99.9%
• Toxaphene 94%
• Trichloroethylene >99.8%
• Turbidity 99.7%

ANSI/NSF Standard 42 - Aesthetic Effects

• Chlorine - Class I 99%
• Hydrogen sulfide 97%
• Particulate 99.9%

(If you ask me, chlorine ought to be in the "Health Effects" category - if someone offers me a glass of water and I forget to ask if it's filtered it makes me feel like I'm about to vomit and when my dad was dying of cancer if you put a glass of unfiltered water into his hand he would vomit when he caught a whiff of it.)

I use it for drinking, cooking, and washing the dishes (no spots when they air-dry lol). Also for when I need to water my African Violets and stuff and don't feel like running to the plant where my buddy works to load up on distilled water.

I was at a local hardware store last evening and picked up one of those whole-house filters for $35. Again, it's no match for RO/distilled, but it'll strip a lot of stuff out of your water system as soon as it enters your home and is a good idea in general. For example, most newer water heaters strongly recommend installing one to prolong the life of the tank.

If you can't go the RO/distilled route, consider installing one. Takes minutes to cut a section of line out and soldier in the fittings for the filter kit and the one I bought came with a nice jumper wire to keep your ground setup (if it uses the copper water lines) intact. And if you're water is as crappy as mine, it'll stop precipitate from forming in a glass of ice-water after the ice melts lol.

 

[leonardo]

Thanks TorturedSoul. I've decided to just buy water from the machine at the grocery store. It says it uses like 5 different filters to get a everything out, including chlorine, and it's only 35 cents a gallon. Today I used it and measured before mixing nutes and it had a PH of about 8.0 and PPM was only 19, and I think that was due to the few drops of tap water and the plastic container it was in. But it seems good enough for me

 

[Keith Lake]

pH is a log scale

so "8" is ten times more alkyline than "7"

Water should be pH 7 when it's pure. There must be something base in your water, or your pH meter might need calibrating.

 

[leonardo]

pH is a log scale

so "8" is ten times more alkyline than "7"

Water should be pH 7 when it's pure. There must be something base in your water, or your pH meter might need calibrating.

My Henna PH meter is brand new, they said it should be good for a year. Do you think I need to have it calibrated? And is that easy and cheap to do?

 

[Keith Lake]

Do the meter come with any calibration solution or can you check it in tap water - to verify.

I don't have any knowledge how to calibrate these things; just trying to flag the suggestion that you may want to check it because pH 8 seems really high for filtered water.

 

[leonardo]

Do the meter come with any calibration solution or can you check it in tap water - to verify.

I don't have any knowledge how to calibrate these things; just trying to flag the suggestion that you may want to check it because pH 8 seems really high for filtered water.

I could have taken it down wrong, I just measured the water I bought yesterday and the PH is at 7.35.

 

[WheeloFortune]

hey leo, 19 ppm??? your meter reads to one ppm?

i use an EC meter as opposed a tds like most americans. it reads in .010 increments, if you were going to put that into a x500 scale tds meter, that would mean that my meter reads in 5 ppm increments. on a x700 scale in 7ppm increments.

most meters have a calibration screw on them so you can calibrate them with a screwdriver and the proper solution. way easy. no need to send it anywhere. what model do you have again?

 

[leonardo]

Both the PH and the EC/TDS/PPM are HANNA. I'm not sure the model numbers, on the back of the red PH meter is HI 98128, the blue PPM meter says HI 98311. Hope that helps.

Since the girls are healthy and green they must work well enough, I think I'll have them both calibrated before I do a run in the VG though. The PPM readings in the saucer keep going down each day since I've flushed, even though I bumped up the nutes today to week 4, there's only about 200-300 PPM added after watering now.

P.S.
I removed the two worst looking Limes today to make more room, the other two will be used as clone practice, maybe one will get flowered next to the VG.