Masterblend Grow 2, Getting More Serious Now

[Budsbunny]

March 20, 2020

Took out the seedling and put it in my rabbit soil....
the dark part of the roots (on the left) were the roots developed in soil before transferring it into the R-DWC system, I cut them off and put the seedling with the newer (white) roots in the soil.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 22, 2020

With the clone it is going well, it shows that you CAN grow with simple household bulbs. Of course you could say that, under “normal circumstances” there is much better growth, but on the other hand I am using Masterblend and maybe that might not be the best nutrients compared to what you guys are using.

 

[bluenoserjoe]

Not sure on the Masterblend. I have been using Dutch Nutrients, a four part grow and bloom line up. Clean, easy to use, inexpensive, local, and the best part, it works great. Your plants are looking fine. The lights are fine for veg. but when it comes time to flower, a whole other story. Sure am curious about how well the rabbit soil performs.

 

[Budsbunny]

Not sure on the Masterblend. I have been using Dutch Nutrients, a four part grow and bloom line up. Clean, easy to use, inexpensive, local, and the best part, it works great. Your plants are looking fine. The lights are fine for veg. but when it comes time to flower, a whole other story. Sure am curious about how well the rabbit soil performs.

When the time comes to flower I can change the spectrum by replacing 5000K bulbs with 2700K & 3000K bulbs. That is pretty much the only thing I can do if I stick with the Masterblend, something what I intend to do

Now for the seedling, the picture below shows the development in 2 days after transplant. That looks pretty good to me, no transplant shock at all and curled leaves are getting up and the top starts to grow, just after 2 days….. I might throw out all buckets, pumps, air pump etc if it goes on like his.

Now for the rabbit poop soil, it contains rabbit poop, lots of egg shells, peanut shells, walnuts, rabbit bones and hay from cleaning the cages. Oh...and LOTS and LOTS of worms in it! I have a dead corner 3 x 3 x 3 meter triangle (10’ x 10’ x 10’) compost pile that gets sun in the afternoon and evening. I might put some girls there this summer. In the back is my greenhouse that I converted into a spa room.

I am using this soil already for my pepper seedlings, I have 10% coco in it and 10% perlite, and these peppers grow like hell. They grow so fast that I am far ahead for putting them outside, a little miscalculation from my side . I have to keep them in my office for about 5 weeks before I can put them outside. Some of them are already topped TWICE to stop them from getting too high. I give them tap water with 200ppm Masterblend in it. For now I will start like that with the little seedling as well.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 23, 2020

Maybe hard to see but the little seedling is still growing well. The stem is also getting much thicker.
I was planning to use the watering system of @Emilia from this site that sounds all very logical to me, I just can’t follow her with the drinking and pipe in the tent, as I do not have a tent…

About the lights, I started with 5 par20 mini household bulbs, each only 7 watt and 500 lm and 3000K, so 35 watts in total on a distance of 1.5+ ft. So 35 watt on 2.25 ft2. I was planning to change the 3000K bulbs with 5000K bulbs but it is actually going very well this way. Maybe I will add 2 bulbs of 5000K later this week, or exchange 2 for 5000K.
I've seen posts from people who do the whole grow cycle with 3000K and/or 5000K bulbs.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 26, 2020

The little seedling in rabbit soil is doing great, I have watered it for the first time this morning with tap water with 200 ppm Masterblend in it. Ph. 6.0

The clone in the R-DWC is doing very well, good growth and nice green color. Roots are also getting more and more. Branches were coming up vigorously from the bottom and I took 2 clones of it this morning, as soil I used rabbit soil, made more fine with the kitchen machine. (dedicated for pot) Added some coco and perlite as well. Depending how the seedling will do in the rabbit soil, these 2 will go in soil in the shower stall, as I took already I plant out yesterday and the second one will follow soon.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 28, 2020

Update on the seedling in rabbit soil. Looks as if this girl feels good in rabbit soil, I was thinking of topping it somewhere next week. It has already a nice thick stem, ready to carry some weight (and my scrog is ready.....)

Still on 35 watt (5 x 7W) household bulbs but I exchanged 2 - 3000K bulbs for 2 - 5000K. Maybe I will exchange some more as it has developed very well these last days with the 2 - 5000K bulbs. Nowadays I go "bit by bit" and not overdo things, almost like with a real girl Also still on tapwater + 200 ppm Masterblend (mix 10-8-5)

 

[bluenoserjoe]

Sure showing some strong growth for a week, she seems to be liking the combination.

 

[Budsbunny]

LOL, she sure does….for now I need to get better acquainted with when and how much to water. I will stay on the MB 200 ppm for the coming time as this soil is already full with “goodies”. Finally after all my experimenting I probably end up growing in soil while having a load of this soil as a compost pile in my back yard.

I already came up with a better pot for my rotating garden, it can and will contain soil ( about 50% more than the 4x4 RW cube, and guess what soil that will be. The only tricky thing is, that I have to feed from below, perhaps I should go back to 1x feeding per 2 days?

 

[Budsbunny]

March 28, 2020

Because of the success with the combination of rabbit soil together with Masterblend, I have decided to do an “experiment” with adding a low dose of rabbit tea in the R-DWC on the clone that is actually doing already really well on Masterblend only.

I still have around 2 garbage bags full with dry rabbit droppings and I just started to put a little bit of droppings in warm water to see how much ppm’s I could get out of that. It is a yogurt container half full with warm tap water (450 ppm) After 10 minutes I decided to strain a bit through a coffee filter and I got 6510 ppm’s, this is very promising I think, as I am planning to start with adding a very low dose into the Masterblend mix later on, maybe 50 ppm as the Masterblend is on 200 ppm. But first I want to see if, during the day the amount of ppm’s increase and if not any more, I will strain this mix and add again warm tap water to the same droppings to see how many ppm’s comes out of it the second time.

Eventually the rabbit tea would be made in a filter bag of course in a larger amount if it is successful.

To be continued…..

Update
After 30 minutes I wanted to measure the ppm's again but I don't get a readout from my BlueLab's pen any more as its maximum readout is "only" 7000. I think I will put this mix in 1 liter of warm tap water (450 ppm) to see what I will get on ppm's (maybe a gallon of tap water is wiser.... )

 

[Budsbunny]

March 29, 2020

This is the “little clone” that went into the system on February 26.

And this is the same plant after 4 weeks. I topped it only once 2 weeks ago, but now it has 7 branches, of which I just topped 4 this evening. I also topped off the nutrients, Masterblend 300 ppm and added some rabbit manure tea, about 40 ppm, so I guess there will be around 15 – 20 ppm in the total batch, just want to keep it safe. Ph is now 5.8 and will check that every day. If all goes well, this will be a very “bushy” plant.

Not bad for growing on a few household bulbs.... finally all my efforts with experimenting with these bulbs pays off in a good way.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 30, 2020

Update on adding “rabbit tea” to the nutrients.

Although I added only a tiny bit to the reservoir (like approx. 20 ppm), the leaves are now pointing upwards much more. (praying leaves?)

I did a search on it and as far as I could find, it can be 2 things :

• Or the lights are too close to the plant
• OR the plant is very healthy and found the “sweet spot” for light intensity (it gets 11,000 – 13,000 LUX)

Although the lights start to be closer now the clone is growing so well, I do believe that the plant is very healthy and reacts very good to the nutrient mix, as the change happened overnight, so no lights “on”. I will however bring the lights up a bit more today.

The more I think of it, when I put the little seedling in the rabbit soil, it’s leaves were a bit “hanging” but after 2 days in the rabbit soil, the leaves were coming upwards as well, see post #44. I did some "rabbit foliar spray" on all I have (5 + 2 clones developing roots in soil)

Although the 2 pictures are in a different angle, you can clearly see that the leaves in the picture on the right are pointing much more upwards.
And I will renew the nutrient batch very soon as the rabbit tea that I added had still some residue in it, I will filter it better and flush my pump, it was time to flush the pump anyway.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 30, 2020

I renewed the nutrient batch of the clone this afternoon and brought the lights higher up, a little bit more info:

RABBIT TEA
I have around 8 liters of water (2 gallon) in the bucket and put, next to the tap water (450 ppm) 200 ppm Masterblend in it. The strange thing with the rabbit tea is, that no matter how much I put in (strength 2200 ppm), the BlueLab pen reads almost nothing more in ppm’s, so for the rabbit tea I have put in 1 cup of 2200 ppm strength, that gave me a reading of only 20 ppm more…..
Another thing…..it took me TWICE as much Ph-down to bring it to a value of 5.7, very strange, but hey…..as the saying is….happy girl, happy life!

LIGHTS

I brought the lights up around 1 feet more, see picture(s).

• The measured LUX without the cones on the canopy was 14,000 – 14,500 LUX
• With the added cones the measured LUX on the canopy was 27,000 – 31,000 LUX

You can clearly see that, without the cones the light spreads immediately to the side instead of down.
I kept the cones on for now, just to see if even more LUX makes a difference.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 31, 2020

Soooooo, this starts to be VERY interesting.

As you all know, I started to experiment with making “rabbit brew” and add that as a supplement to my Masterblend nutrients, not sure how that would turn out as MB is synthetic and the rabbit brew is pure organic. Nevertheless, I gave it in a very small amount as an extra to my 2 girls, one in rabbit compost and one in R-DWC, in both cases with excellent results, see previous posts.

At the same time, on March 28, I started a test on my pepper plants who were getting tap water + 200 ppm Masterblend with good results. I set 4 plants aside, all four had the same height, two of them (the ones on the left) were given the tap water with only MB and the 2 on the right were given tap water with ONLY rabbit brew….so in the picture you see the result of the 3rd day. I can’t give you the amount of ppm’s as my BlueLab pen does not really react on rabbit brew so I have to dose it by volume and I did not measure that exactly. The 2 plants on the right had already more leaves before the test so you can only compare the difference in height.

Maybe this topic deserves a separate new post but I have already so much different posts, it starts to be very time consuming.

Anyway, what do you guys think about this and has any of you any knowledge or friends with experience in this? If I make a new post about this I want and need input/opinions from others, otherwise I keep it for myself, tired of people only riding along.

 

[Budsbunny]

March 31, 2020

As one of the last things for today I decided to train the clone a bit because there are so many branches and oh yeah…….the T on the main stem split….lucky me……

Put a tie-rib on it, it is a perfect fit so hopefully this will come back all together in a good way, just as everything went so well lol.

 

[Budsbunny]

April 1, 2020

This morning I watered the little seedling for the 3rd time and this is the first time I have added some extra rabbit tea in the nutrients, let’s see if that is going to make a difference.
The April 1 plant does not look much bigger but that's because the distance is further away, (look at the bucket) otherwise I could not show all the leaves from left to right.

Below is the clone of which I accidentally broke/split the main stem at the “T” yesterday. I tied it all together within 30 minutes and until now it seems to go very well, it is the left side of the plant. All leaves are pointing up again, despite that I put the lights much higher, it MUST be the extra rabbit tea that I have put in the reservoir…….

RABBIT TEA / DROPPINGS / BREW
I have decided to make a separate post of this topic, but it means that I will not focus on that very much in the other topics, like this one, the rotating garden and a new growth to come. It will be about:

• How to make it safe and clean
• How to dose it
• How much I use in soil
• How much I use for R-DWC
• How much and how to stock it up for some growth.
• And preferably some good results with pictures of course

Hope to see all of you when the new post is up, maybe tomorrow.

 

[Budsbunny]

April 4, 2020

The little clone is developing very promising while using rabbit tea.

Please note that; I am moving the grow development of this clone to my new post “Rabbit poop is here to stay”
Cheers and stay safe!

 

[Budsbunny]

April 18, 2020

This is the (partly) QWET result of the 2 small Harlequin plants from the shower stall. The jar on the left was 35 seconds in 95% alcohol and the jar on the right was using the leaves of batch 1 but now 5 minutes in the 95% alcohol. Eventually tinctures will be made of these 2. I still have the remaining leaves of the QWET in the freezer as I think I could do it a third time and make a tea or so from it.

No further follow-up, just wanted to show you color vs. time in the alcohol.

 

[Budsbunny]

April 25, 2020

Finally a bit of time to do an update. My girlfriend got me into wine making and that costed me the biggest part of the week, picking up, cleaning and dragging carboys around…..Oh my, how easy it is to make alcohol….

Soooo, the one in Masterblend (below) is ready for 12/12, I’ve been planning that now for several days but you know what they say……happy wife = happy life! Needs some defoliation as well.

All in all I took 6 clones of this one, need to bring up the light a bit and place the scrog.

Below is the (little) clone in the chest, it grows in rabbit compost from my garden (no extra droppings added) and gets only water……I am really surprised about this one. This one should be defoliated a bit, put scrog in place and set on 12/12 as well.
I took 4 clones of this one last week.

 

[Budsbunny]

April 27, 2020

So much to do and so little time, the only thing I did today in the basement, placing the scrog.