Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 2017

Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

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Scientific, check out the picture above. The stalk did the same thing... you can see the purple splitting apart and showing green. Now the main stem has a cool purple streak (scar?) left from the younger days like a stretch mark.
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

The stalk did the same thing... you can see the purple splitting apart and showing green. Now the main stem has a cool purple streak (scar?) left from the younger days like a stretch mark.

Ah! Thank you so much for posting that Chanky! It's a relief to see that I'm not only one. (And I saw the Harry Potter scar on yours over on your DLF grow page).

Here's this evening's glam shot. I started to use the keyword "seedling," when I uploaded it, but she's not really a seedling anymore, is she? "Plantlette" In any case, she continues to recover even if she does continue to freak me out sometimes. A mother worries... It's awesome and exciting to see her growing and looking healthy at last.
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Day 17
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 18

I think she's out of the woods. I'm still using a magnifying glass to look at her leaves and a macro lens to get her all in the frame, but look how much she has grown in just two days!

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Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 18
I changed the media today (Flora series Micro, Grow, Bloom + CALiMAGic Ca/Mg + Hydroguard. 2.5 gallons at pH about 5.5ish and 720 PPM.

While the tank was empty, I took a look. I was amazed that the tap root grew a couple of inches in one day before. It has grown about a foot in two days and now wraps around the pump, and there are more roots coming out of the sides. This thing is rockin now! :)

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Roots at Day 16 and Day 18
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 19
With my nose an inch away from her, she smells like POT! :yummy:

Overall: She looks healthy and is growing, but is looking a bit like butter lettuce--compact and succulent (?!). Maybe that's because she's a pampered indoor hydroponic baby and not a weed growing in a ditch along the side of the road in Mexico? Richard Simmons versus Clint Eastwood?

Growth questions: I'm wondering when she's going to start growing taller. (She's 43 mm tall now after being stuck at 25 for a long time, so maybe she's still recovering?) She is getting 24-hour intense light--four 1600 lux 23W CFLs just inches away. If not enough light makes a plant "stretch," does too much (or just a lot) of light make it more compact? (I've read that lots of light makes buds more compact. I assume the same might be true of the plant as a whole.) Would this plant be growing taller with less light? Enquiring minds want to know.

Yesterday's media refresh details Refreshed the media after just six days. Media volume is nominally 2.5 gallons, but there was still about 12 mm of it in the bottom of the reservoir when the pump ran dry, so the better part of a gallon of medium was still in there.
Figures: Final pH about 5.5 and 720 PPM. To 2.5 gallons H20 (with a starting PPM of 28) added 6.25 ml each of FloraMicro, FloraGro, and Flora Bloom, and 5 ml CALiMagic and 5 ml Hydroguard. (I just found out at the General Hydroponics website that you're supposed to add CALiMAGic first, THEN FloraMicro, and then the rest.) pH was about 6 after adding nutes. Added 1 ml pH Down and thought I might have overdone it a little as pH looked to be about 5.5, but it's back up to 6 this morning (Day 19), so I added another .5 ml this morning, trying to get/keep the pH below 6. (If you read all the way to here, congratulations, you are hard core. ;))

Humidity control: With a 13x9 pan of water and my DIY papertowel swamp cooler/humidifier, the temperature and humidity are staying in a good range, even with four lights on. 68 F and 48% RH this morning. (That will rise during the day, and I know it's warmer directly under the lights.)

Lighting: She's getting dense enough now that the top leaves are starting to shade the bottom leaves, so maybe eventually it's going to be time to move the four CFLs out of their parabolic reflector and place them around the plant? I did put the reflector back around the base of the plant (but with a bigger hole in the middle so the base of the plant isn't too dark, encouraging roots to grow where they shouldn't), so a lot of light is getting reflected back up, but eventually I'm going to have to distribute the lights better. With just one dwarf plant, I'm hoping/expecting that the four CFL will be sufficient.

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Day 19: She's wider than her pot now and has her first five-finger leaf (That's the tank dipstick at the top.)
 
Day 19: Training Day 1

Day 19: Training Day

My plan from the start has been to use Nebula Haze's "No-Technique" plant training technique in which you simply bend the stem over 90 degrees so "all the lower branches are able to grow up and become main colas." That seems like a good choice for this grow for three reasons:
  • It's simple.
  • Full-on "mainlining" can't be used on an autoflower plant.
  • The opening to the fireplace that I'm using as a grow room is only 19" tall, so training the plant sideways helps both to keep the plant short and to take advantage of the space that's available laterally.
That's my reasoning anyway.

Here's a shot from Nebula's site of a plant that was trained using only "No-Technique" training.
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"No-Technique" plant training example, in which the only training was bending the stem over 90 degrees

I screwed a hardware cloth trellis onto the top of the reservoir so I have easy anchor points to train the plant to the right.

Even though this plant barely has three nodes and is less than two inches tall, I figure that if she's going to get bent, she might as well get bent early when she's young and flexible, so over she goes! I kind of hate to give up her beautiful symmetry, but she's a working girl and has to earn her keep.

You can see in the photo below that the growth at the second node is now out of the shadows and turned vertical. It will be interesting to see what happens there and how soon.

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Let's get asymmetrical!

When I returned just a couple of hours later, the top of the plant had already turned upright again. I had read that plants could respond to LST very quickly, but I was still surprised.

While I was out, I had decided to cut off the bottom node that was turned away from the light, so when I got back I did that and also switched over to the Miracle Gro padded wire which doesn't cut into the delicate plant tissue the way the green twist tie stuff wants to. The twist tie would be fine, I think, on tougher stalks, but this plant is still very young and soft.
The second wire (on the left) holds down the big leaf to give the node some space.



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Cannabondage

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Node 1 preserved, node 2 removed

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Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 19: Training day (continued)
I eventually decided to remove both of the growth tips from the second node up from the roots. The (evolving) plan is to expose both growth tips of the first node in hopes that they will grow to become monster colas. ;) Then apply low stress training to them to splay them out to the sides, away from the axis of the main stalk, resulting in a plant that is low and has growth that spreads from left to right and is even in height.

I don't know how much more time I have before this plant starts to flower, but based on other peoples' experience with DLF, it will probably be soon. I don't plan to do any major cutting (i.e. node removal) after flowering starts.

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The plan du jour: Bend the stalk over 90 degrees to the right. As time allows before flowering, trim some nodes (even #s?) and train others.
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Cannabondage!!! Hahahahah! Scientific, on an emotional level, did it hurt to cut that piece? Is the trimming of every other node to allow space? Or is it because those will have a side that faces down?
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Cannabondage!!! Hahahahah! Scientific, on an emotional level, did it hurt to cut that piece? Is the trimming of every other node to allow space? Or is it because those will have a side that faces down?

Snipping off the two little growth sites felt surgical, like going in to make a couple of enhancements. Snip snip. What bugged me was mashing down my pretty, symmetrical little plant. And it is still little. It's growing roots like crazy, and its leaves are growing fast, but she's still pretty dinky.

Is the trimming of every other node to allow space? Or is it because those will have a side that faces down?

When I pulled her over, I saw that one of the growth sites at node 2 was facing down, so it seemed obvious that that one should go. Then I had the two growth sites for node 1 and one for node 2 exposed. Having three growth sites all facing up into the light seemed pretty ideal, but then I decided to limit it to just the two from Node 1 and to try to train those outwards as they grow. Given this plant's size and history, it seemed wiser to have her put her efforts into just two extra sites, not three.

It will be interesting to see how (and if) this all works. I see from your log that your DLF had preflowers about 22 days from going in the water/18 days from sprouting. That's just two days away for this plant, and I don't want to be cutting and stressing her too much after she starts flowering. But I kind of have a sneaking suspicion that she's not going to try to make flowers for a while yet--not until she gets a little bigger. That's the one thing that I'm really curious to see: does flowering really always start at day X, or does the plant have to reach a certain level of maturity or size first? (My outdoor plant is just an inch and a half tall and it's almost a month old, and she's not showing any sign of flowering, so I that's some validation for my theory.)

I'll even propose a hypothesis based on how yours and others have started flowering and my two problem children have not:
"The Dwarf Low Flyer strain starts to flower (i.e. shows "preflowers") when it has grown to have about six nodes."
That could be completely wrong or at the very least is subject to refinement. My girls can be test cases.

I found the following at Flowering.
Flowering involves the conversion of the apical meristem into a floral meristem, from which all the parts of the flower will be produced.

Signals that change the fate of the apical meristem include:
maturity of the plant;
temperature;
the arrival of the plant hormone gibberellin;
and, for many plants, photoperiod — the relative length of day and night.


If we remove photoperiod for a ruderalis-derived strain, and the temperature in our grow rooms is more or less constant, and we ignore the hormone gibberellin as just to complicated to get into, that leaves plant maturity. Then again I'm left wondering how a plant determines maturity. Age, biomass, number of nodes?

All of this applied botany is fun. I still find it very hard to believe that this little plant is actually going to change into a big girl and produce buds someday...

After all that verbiage, I have to post some herbiage. Here's the patient laid out on the table and her surgical/training plan.

Thanks for dropping by and stay tuned. :)

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Day 20 training plan. God help the poor girl. (Pulling the leaves to the right means down in this shot.)
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 23 - Preflowers!
OMG, she's still tiny and I have her spreadeagled for some extreme LST, but looking at this morning's snapshot, I see that she's making preflowers at node three--just two tiny wisps but definitely there! I have a feeling that this is going to be one tiny, freaky plant!

I just received my $15 lux meter today. She was getting 71,000 lux, which may have actually stunted here still more by "dynamic photo inhibition." (I turned off one of the three, 1600-lumen CFLs which took her down to a reportedly good illumination level of 52,000 lux.)

Other than her small size, she looks healthy, growing rapidly, and smells like marijuana and mint!

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Two tiny, wispy preflowers at node three on day 23

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Still tiny, but dense, growing, and going into flower!
 
Re: Splitting open to add more roots?

Day 17

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Stalk splitting (Note that you can still see some hooking of the lower leaves from the earlier O2 deprivation. I don't think those leaves are ever going to be quite right...)


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Four days after I stripped all the rock wool off her roots, this morning she's still looking healthy, and she is growing, so everything looks OK up in the canopy!

Hello Scientific,

I read your growth journal and am thoroughly enjoying the journey into which not only yourself, but other growers are going through! I truly cannot wait until everything settles down with the frequent flying to/from, mom & dad doling out even more $$$$... for the wedding. Why must weddings be so expensive? Ahhhh! But, after we're finished with their wedding, I'll finally be doing growth journal starting mid to late November. I actually feel better waiting until then. This way we won't have to worry about prying eyes from the golfers at the courses behind us.

I am a bit disappointed with myself... a few growers explained nodes to me... it's an exceptionally excellent illustration he or she did not too long ago... I wish I could find it. You know what 420 needs? Members who like such and such informative posts could put it into a folder of their own that they create. In the future, one can go back to such folders and find what they were looking for and use it for their reference. Just my own opinion.

With 'Nodes' (Is node singular word? I do not know if node(s) is needed? Like deer. There's no deers. Fish, no plural fishes, folk is both singular and plural... I've not a single clue about the plural word for node. Can someone please tell me? Thanks so very much. .

Do I understand all of you who say something to the effect with the words; node, topping or maybe topped, cut/or/finger-snipping...(??? ???? ???)
I am picturing my oregano bush, rosemary bush , sage, etc... I use my fingers to twist off real tiny florets that could otherwise restrict continuous steady growth of the herb. I most especially do this with the basils. When I remove the very centre new growth florets, the herb becomes massively bushy.
~ In essence, is what the removal of the florets --- for marijuana plants called, 'topping'?
~ the node/s of the marijuana aka stem? Stalk? Branches?
I am still trying to learn just what one must do...

~ I was under the impression that we want flowering to produce. Did I actually misunderstand what I thought? I am getting confused with auto flowering plants vs non auto flowering plants.

I have been meaning to ask you... I had to find the word... you call it a rock wool. Or wool rock. I've never heard of such thing before. Does it insulate the individual seed as well as help speed up the germination process?
What kind of wool is it that's used? Potatoes!!!????

I am honestly disappointed in myself for not remembering some things that I shouldn't be forgetting.
It's my own embarrassment. I own it.

Btw, I purchased just 5 auto flowering seeds from CK, its White Widow.
I might purchase train wreck seeds in a couple months or so.

Oh! Before I forget, what does TST stand for please? Thanks!

I have decided that I'm far too intimidated to do hydroponics. I just don't have the brain of an engineer. I don't even watch the telly because there's just too many apps or whatever it's called... just too many... I just stick with making life difficult/challenging!

I think I'm going to grow the seedings (or is it...seedlings?) using fibre cloth... just keeping it simple.. perhaps over time and with a heck of a lot more confidence than what I have at this time. It's a good challenge for me! It takes me out of my comfort zone. I teach professional ASL to intermediate and very advanced levels. That's the only language I communicate with... so I certainly understand all too well ... the precise definition of being out of your element or outside of comfort zone. .

I'm forever grateful for this 420 magazine app! The best thing is meeting with everyone! .


~ Bubbi
You should be free from the three diseases.
Never doubt, never fear, never over - think.
You need to control your feelings.
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Hi Bubbi -- I'm glad you are enjoying reading about my various cannabis growing misadventures. I'm enjoying it too.

> Why must weddings be so expensive?
I take comfort in the fact that in other cultures they spend even more (at least as a percentage of income). I think the anthropologists would say that it strengthens social ties! And of course everyone enjoys a big party. ;)

> I'll finally be doing growth journal starting mid to late November.
I'll look forward to seeing it. Please send me a note when you start it. The fact that you say you are concerned about the prying eyes of golfers leads me to believe you are planning an outdoor grow in November. I'm guessing you live someplace further south than me. ;)

> You know what 420 needs? Members who like such and such informative posts could put it into a folder of their own that they create. In the future, one can go back to such folders and find what they were looking for and use it for their reference.
Agreed. Of course, you can bookmark the thread. I cut and paste some really useful info into Microsoft OneNote.

> With 'Nodes' (Is node singular word?
Uh huh. They are the points at which leaves emerge from the stalk and flowers form. I do believe it's an actual botanist's term. As for the details of topping, FIMing, and other techniques, I am so happy that now we have all of this information on YouTube and the places like this. When I attempted my first grow, all I had was a little booklet called "Growing Marijuana at Home" or something like that. They kept it under the counter at the hippy garden shop (which is still in business after 50 years).

> I was under the impression that we want flowering to produce. Did I actually misunderstand what I thought? I am getting confused with auto flowering plants vs non auto flowering plants.
Yes, we absolutely want flowers! (And only female flowers.) I was confused also by autoflowering plants and some of the other advances that have been made. Basically, most cannabis doesn't flower in nature until the days start to grow short in the fall. Indoor growers simulate those shorter days by reducing the number of hours that the lights are turned on. But the flowering of one type of cannabis (Cannabis ruderalis, is not triggered by day length. It just flowers automatically after a certain number of days. Breeders have bred C. ruderalis with other cannabis plants to make hybrids that flower automatically without having to change the length the duration of illumination. The indoor plant I'm documenting here is a great (and kind of funny) example--it's only inches tall and getting bright light 24 hours a day, but after 23 days, it's starting to flower, ready on not! :)

> I have been meaning to ask you... I had to find the word... you call it a rock wool.
Rock wool is pretty much the same thing as the fiberglass insulation in your ceiling. It is nasty stuff that can put little slivers of glass in your skin and worse, in your respiratory system. It was only after I used it that I learned of its hazards and that my grow guru says not to use it, and sure enough, it caused me nothing but trouble. Rapid Rooter plugs are what people are enthusiastically recommending to me instead.

> Btw, I purchased just 5 auto flowering seeds from CK, its White Widow. I might purchase train wreck seeds in a couple months or so
Excellent! Why not plant one just for fun in a quiet, sunny corner of the golf course and see what happens? ;)

> Oh! Before I forget, what does TST stand for please? Thanks!
"LST" stands for "low stress training," which is just using wires or tape to position the leaves and branches where you want them to make room for big buds to form. (Anything else, topping, FIMing, supercropping, etc, is I guess "high stress training." ;)

> I have decided that I'm far too intimidated to do hydroponics.
I wanted to try hydroponics because I have been hearing about it all my life. (I remember as a kid that it seemed in the future, no one would use dirt and we'd grow everything using the new scientific hydroponic techniques.) It's fun to be able to control the nutrients exactly, and when it works, I'm told that the results can be astonishing, but you have only to look around here to see that most people are still using soil, and they are getting amazing results (or to ready my journal to see that not done right, the results can be... interesting). I enjoy fussing with pumps and chemical solutions and all that, but clearly, good seeds in good soil with plenty of light works just fine! That said, I do think it's good (and fun) to get out of my comfort zone every now and then to try something new. I'm already planning my next hydroponic grow, and am confident that with what I have learned, it will be much more successful.

> I'm forever grateful for this 420 magazine app! The best thing is meeting with everyone!
Agreed! This is a great resource, and I enjoy learning from and interacting with the people here. :)
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 24

Stats & status: pH is steady at about 5.9. I added a cup of water to bring the tank back to 2.5 gallons and 720 PPM. She's getting 60,000 lumens, 24 hours a day. She's still small, but her stalk is steadily growing thicker and longer, she's putting out new leaves, and she looks healthy.

Some thoughts about DLF flowering: I'm still gobsmacked by the appearance of preflowers! Four days ago I hypothesized that, based on other DLF logs here, "The Dwarf Low Flyer strain starts to flower (i.e. shows "preflowers") when it has grown to have about six nodes" (that is, at a certain level of maturity rather than at a certain number of days of age). This one just got her sixth node and has started to preflower. The DLF outside in the cold and rain on my deck has just barely two nodes, and although that one is healthy and growing (very slowly), at 30 days of age she is still less than 2" tall and showing no signs of flowering.

Training, trimming, tormenting, and letting her be: I adjusted her half dozen LST restraints to get maximum light to the growth sites at nodes 1, 3, and now 4 as well. I had thought about cutting off the growth sites at node 4 and maybe topping her, but I think now that she wants to autoflower, it's time to stick to LST, shepherd her through to budding, and see what she can do.

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Preflowers at nodes three and four :)

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Continuing her more-or-less "no-technique" training (that is, mostly just bending her over 90 degrees to expose growth sites at the nodes)
 
Fan + low humidity + high light = bad

Day 25: Toasting my plant with hot, dry air

The bad news: I toasted her by simultaneously reducing humidity + blowing hot dry air on her

Last night I noticed some blotches on one of the older leaves. (See photo) I guessed that it was damage from LST. I had also noticed that some of the older leaves were feeling a little bit dry, but ignored that. 12 hours later there is blotching all over the plant. The blotched leaves are also very dry.

It didn't take a plant pathologist to figure out the problem. This tiny 24"x16" grow space can heat up fast and has tended to get dry, the humidity dropping into the 30s. It was enough of a problem that I had made a homebrew humidifier/ evaporative cooler (aka a swamp cooler) made from a Home Depot evaporative cooler element in a plastic pan of water with a pump sending water to the top to trickle down and a computer fan behind it to blow air through. It worked fine.

In fact, my humidity problem was so well under control that I decided to move the fan around to blow on the leaves of the plant. Big mistake! I simultaneously reduced the effectiveness of the humidifier and increased the drying of the leaves. Plus I have been giving the plant 50,000+ lumens of light from four closely placed 23-watt CFLs. Triple whammy. In just 24 hours, I did significant damage to the plant, especially to the older leaves. BTW, the fan is just a 140 mm 60 CFM computer fan. It's a wimp.

I have moved the fan back and put a 13"x9" pan of water in there, and I'm confident that I have fixed the messed-up setup, but the plant took a hit. One older leaf was so toasted that I just cut it off.

The good news: She's growing fast
The plant continues to grow fast. (I think she may be entering her flowering stretch now that preflowers have appeared.) She really wants to be a bush, not a tree. Working on the LST feels like working on a dense shrub. The leaves are so dense that they don't photograph very well--they are a mini jungle. That said, I'm continuing to train the nodes into bud-producing sites.

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Aerial view this morning: Last night's LST'd open spots have completely filled in, but older leaves were badly damaged by low humidity + fan + intense light.

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Crispy older leaf that was so far gone that I just cut it off.

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The DIY evaporative cooler/humidifier. The reservoir is the clear plastic desk organizer at the bottom. You can see the tubing coming out of the tiny pump. That carries the water to the aluminum foil manifold, an aluminum foil try with holes punched in the bottom that is hot-glued onto the Home Depot evaporative cooler element. Hidden from view and immediately behind the element is a 140 mm fan that blows air through the element. When I moved the fan from behind the element so it blew on the plant, I reduced humidity and increased plant drying. That was really dumb in retrospect, but I think that (once again...), the plant will recover.

The water pump: VicTsing 80 GPH (300L/H) Submersible Water Pump For Pond, Aquarium, Fish Tank Fountain Water Pump Hydroponics with 5.9ft (1.8M) Power Cord from Amazon.
The evaporative cooler element (which is great--so much better than wet paper towels):
Champion Cooler MasterCool CP35 Replacement Rigid Media for Portable Evaporative Cooler from Home Depot
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 25: Autoflowers don't recover well from early mistakes

I have read a couple of times that one of the shortcomings of autoflower plants is that if you make a mistake early on, you can't just extend the vegetative phase to give the plant time to recover. I think I have seen that with this plant. It lost a week of growth when it's roots were too wet, and it never regained that lost week before preflowers started to form. Not it looks like it's going into its flowering stretch period, so its growing fast, but it's a stunted dwarf plant and that's not going to change. It well be interesting to see what it ends up looking like and how much it yields (if I don't kill it first...)
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Scientific, you have truly lived up to the expectations of your moniker! Thank you for sharing your observations on your experiment!
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 25: The leaves are even more damaged than I thought

The older leaves that I had hoped this morning were just dry and would recover are actually looking worse this evening.

I'm reminded of something that Robert Frost said, something like, "I never write experimental poems. I have failed poems that I call experiments." Tonight for the first time the idea crossed my mind to chalk this one up as an "experiment" and start again.

Here's irony: first I stunted her by getting her too wet, then I baked her under bright lights and got her too dry.

People often think that keeping a big 60-gallon aquarium must be harder than a little 20-gallon one, but a big aquarium is actually much easier because three times more water resists the changes in temperature and chemistry that can stress the fish. One take-away from this experience is that growing in a small space is more challenging for the same reason: a 70 cubic foot grow tent does not heat up and dry out as fast as a 3 cubic foot grow space. (I had thought that the chimney ventilation would make more difference than it did.)

Lessons learned the hard way! I'll see how she looks tomorrow morning and decide what to do then. I'm pretty confident that starting over with what I know now would enable me to have a successful grow. As it is now, this project is starting to feel more and more like putting a lot of energy into a plant that is too crippled to have a good yield.
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Scientific, you have truly lived up to the expectations of your moniker! Thank you for sharing your observations on your experiment!

Thanks Chanky! I do hope that my misadventures have been of interest and possibly as instructive to others as they have been to me!
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 26: "Yes, we can," and weekly media refresh

I have decided to continue with this plant. After my dark night of the soul last night, this morning there is no more leaf damage and she continues to grow and pop out new leaves. She's never gonna be big and she's never gonna win plant of the month (in fact after all of my mistakes, she's lucky to be alive), but how can you give up on this little green life form that just keeps on chugging along?

pH of the media this morning was dangerously low. (Shall I chalk that up as screw-up #3?) I don't have a pH meter, but the color of the test solution was well into the orange, like getting below 5.5? The tank was down about another cup of water this morning (that is, down about 1%). That's not enough to have concentrated it to lower the pH that much. I'm not sure what's going on. I have been trying to get the pH down into the middle to bottom of the correct range, and I think I have just overdone it, and that maybe it takes longer for pH changes to be fully apparent in testing than I thought (as in check it an hour after adding pH down, not 5 minutes). Just as a smaller aquarium is more sensitive to changes, so too is a 2.5 gallon hydroponic reservoir?

I did the weekly media refresh. Because she has some preflowers, I had thought about switching to a more concentrated, "Transition" dose of nutrients, but:

  • Autoflowers generally need less nutrients, as I understand it.
  • This plant is a dwarf strain, and she is small (a nice way of saying "stunted.")
  • The PPM meter readings are not changing week to week, so she is not using a measurable amount of nutrients.
  • She isn't showing any signs of deficiency.
So I'm going to leave her on the "vegetative" regimen that she has been on, Nebula Haze's diluted version of the General Hydroponics recommended levels.

So for the third week in a row she is getting:
  • 2.5 ml / gallon of FloraMicro, FloraGro, and FloraBloom (no change)
  • 2.0 ml / gallon of HydroGuard (no change)
  • 2.5 ml / gallon of CALiMAGic (1/2 the previous dose. For some reason you reduce the Ca and Mg when you go into flowering).
    • Just as a note, I found an obscure note in the General Hydroponics web pages saying that you should add CALiMagic first. THEN FloraMicro, and only then the rest.)
    • The CALiMAG is the major source of PPM (48% of last week's mix), so reducing it by half lowered the PPM from 720 to 543 PPM. (The extremely soft water here contributes only 28 PPM.)
pH: I added either .5 or .75 ml of pH Down to get the pH to about 5.9 or so.

Rinse: For the first time, based on General Hydroponic's recommendation, I rinsed the tank and hydroton by pouring 1 gallon of pH'd water through after draining the tank and before adding fresh media.

Hassle: Hydroponics lets you dial in the nutrients to exactly the levels you want, but at a cost of an awful lot of wet work. It takes me about an hour a week to drain, mix, adjust, etc, and you gotta get it all just right. There is definitely a PITA factor.

LTM: I fuss with her training wires at least twice a day. It's cool how as soon as I open up a space, the greenery rushes in within hours to fill it!
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Her root growth continues unabated!
 
Re: Scientific's Hydro Dwarf Low Flyer 24/7 Illumination Fireplace Grow Journal - 201

Day 29
She's still a runt, but dammit I've decided that I'm taking her all the way to (10 gram?) harvest! (And I'm learning a lot, mostly by making a lot of mistakes...)
Explosive bushiness
It has been six days since I saw the first preflower, so she should be one week into the flowering stretch. She's still small but is growing fast--not so much growing bigger as growing denser. Because the main stalk is pulled over 90 degrees because I'm trying "no-technique" training (see photo in post #26), her stalk is growing sideways. I chose this technique because I was afraid she'd get too tall, but that clearly hasn't been a problem. She looks like a big pile of salad on a plate. I pull at her leaves and stalks with training wires to open her up, and 12 hours later she looks like she hasn't been touched--the opening in the jungle is completely filled in. Maybe this strain is too bushy for this technique. Maybe the 24-hour lighting is making her so bushy. Maybe it's the earlier stunting. Maybe she's just a extra-dwarfy dwarf? In any case, she's growing.

She's drinking
Along with the growth, all of a sudden she's draining about two cups of water a day from the tank!

No further sign of flowering
Because she is so small, I have been hoping for a major stretch before bud formation starts. Six days after the first preflower it looks like I'm getting my wish.

In for a penny, in for a pound
This started as a cheap, low-key CFL grow. I guess hydroponics is mostly to blame, but I have added more stuff. Notably I have added:
  • A PPM meter These are clearly indispensable for hydroponics. Three days ago nutrient concentration was 543 PPM. Tonight it's 100 PPM lower. It's very cool, very interesting, and very powerful to be able to watch the nutrients disappear from solution. (HM Digital AP-1 AquaPro Water Quality Total Dissolved Solids Tester, 0-5000 ppm TDS Range, 1 ppm Resolution, +/- 2% Readout Accuracy $23 at Amazon)
  • A pH meter Just a 15 dollar pH meter (carefully calibrated) has revealed that my pH had dropped down to 5.0! No harm done, apparently. I corrected it up to pH 5.6. Apparently my ability to read shades of yellow-orange are limited. I'm thinking that a pH meter is also indispensable for hydroponics. (Jellas Pocket Size pH Meter. $15 from Amazon. Only .1 unit resolution (which is enough) and kind of a pain to calibrate with a jeweler's screwdriver. It requires three silver oxide watch batteries. I hope they last a long time.
  • Leaton Digital Lux Meter $16 at Amazon. This one is not indispensable, I guess, but it sure is nice to be able to get objective light measurements. I'm glad I got it. It doesn't work with LEDs though.
  • Two more lights
    TaoTronics 12 Watt LED Grow Light, $20 at Amazon which is pointed at the growing tip of the plant, filling in where the CFL coverage is giving out. (Curiosity got the better of me and I just had to play with an LED grow light. So right on and so weird to have the spectrum custom tailored for the chlorophyll absorption.)
    Small, low wattage CFL light therapy light left behind by the last tenant. It doesn't give out much light, but it is filling in a dark area in the back a little.​

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How do you train an exploding bush? (Can you see the one training wire buried in there?)

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Sol Brothers: My new 12-watt LED grow light and a Martian scout from the 1953 version of War of the Worlds

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That's a whole lot of technology trained on one small salad! ;) Timer at top left turns the pump on and off in half our intervals (though most of the root mass is down in the reservoir now, so it doesn't really matter). New 12 watt LED grow light is actually hitting the growing apex of the plant a little and not all reflecting off the reflector. Old light therapy light on the left doing its bit. Honeycomb on right is the humidifier element. 9x9 glass dish is for humidity too. Old Radio Shack Temp/RH unit. (There are four, 25-watt CFLs inside the reflector.)

Grow Baby Grow!
 
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