Vapoholic's Skunk 2016 - First Grow

[Fuzzy Duck]

I'm pleased that the RO water is providing better results.

But the plants should be able to deal with some PH swing between PH 5.5 to 7 reasonable easy, it is just going lower or greater where some nutrients may become locked out due to PH value, most micro nutrients are chelated so that they can work over a larger PH range as an example not sure about the macro nutrients for hydroponic nutrient solutions tho.

PH up/down acids do degrade over time this might be down to strength of the acid as this may change between brands, seen some as low as 33% whilst others have ranged at 70% just some thing to think over.

Most nutrients are acidic !


Under standing what may effect PH, EC or PPM values whilst growing is another area to cover...

Plants are feeding lowering EC/PPM & a increase in PH may be observed.

Plants are drinking more water EC/PPM will increase & lower PH to more acidic levels etc.

Just some common areas really.



I think most will over look RH or relative humidity which may cause the plant to drink more/less as well just a little some thing ya don't see mentioned often.

All of this changes through stage of growth

 

[vapoholic]

Yeah there's a lot of things to learn and as with everything, first time is always a bit nervous.

Being an engineer/developer by profession it's hard not to do the if-then-else with very little leeway margins

It's obvious that after a few grows you learn to know the "ebbs and flows" of the setup and react accordingly with no more panic than warranted

 

[vapoholic]

Day 16, trying with my real camera from now on.

Found sediments in my water. First I thought is was brown algae, but it is actually particles. Seems to be somewhat normal though from the nutes, so I'll keep it cool for now.

 

[Noob4x4grow]

Subbed. Nice save on the wilma. I was going to do a hyrdo grow on my first grow in a long time. But I chose to go with soil because I know it is more forgiving and I have worked with it in the past. I will move to a hydro setup eventually but for now I'm just trying to find an awesome plant that I can clone for each strain that I have. I absolutely love that you are jumping in with both feet and I am a little envious of the growth that you should be able to obtain should you get your system dialed in. Pulling up a chair on this one.

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Ye i understand, we where all first timers at some point

I spent about 6 months reading stuff & cross examining some info working out what was factual it was a bit wtf at times... before i even got a grow tent or started growing for a bit of percy.

Ha ho, 4 years later & a little bit wiser as for experience, well lets just say their is quite a large area to cover along with methods used for growing !


But hell ye, your girls are looking just fine & i look forwards to seeing the journal unfold in due time

 

[vapoholic]

Digital timer for watering failed twice already. Replaced with good old fashioned analog (the spinning wheel).

 

[vapoholic]

Day 19.

I will change water tomorrow. I noticed that no roots have come through the pots yet, so I will take this opportunity to remove everything and clean it one last time. I have a crap load of sediments which I need to clean off. I think it's a combination of things I did; I added the nutes directly to the tank and ran a, probably over the top, massive aeration with air stones, so the nutes might not have mixed properly and might have reacted weirdly with all that air.
The sedimentation seemed to have started right after I added more nutes and added the air stones.

Since I seem to be able to keep my water below 22C for now I'll just prepare the R/O water properly, with all the nutes in it and then try one week without any fancy tricks, just the watering pump running in the intervals. No extra circulation pump or air stones.

 

[Noob4x4grow]

The change in growth in just 3 days is phenomenal. Interesting point about the airstones helping to create the extra sediment. I'm intrigued to see if you fix the problem with cleaning and removing the airstone.

 

[vapoholic]

Changed water and cleaned the reservoir </sweat>

Added nutes at half strength for now, went up to about 1,7 EC which seems ok for this stage (well at least from what I can gather). pH at 5.8-5.9 after adding everything.

Added for 50L:

25ml Hydroguard
50ml AN Cal-Mag Extra
50ml AN B-52
50ml AN Voodoo Juice
100ml AN Grow A
100ml AN Grow B
5ml D-Block

 

[vapoholic]

Day 21

 

[Stinky Snid]

Love the setup, it looks so professional. Everything is just looking great vapoholic, the plants are all about even too.

KiG cheers

 

[Noob4x4grow]

Day 21

Looking awesome vapoholic

How long are you vegging those babies out for?

 

[vapoholic]

Looking awesome vapoholic

How long are you vegging those babies out for?

I am not sure yet. I want to main line, so I think I'll wait for at about 7 nodes to cut above the 3rd, so they can all be somewhat even (the top left one is a bit smaller). I think 5-6 nodes is the most common, but I'd rather have a robust base and it wouldn't be much time lost anyway.
It obviously depends on how fast they grow as well, they really seemed to like the water change I did, looking particularly perky today.
I'll see during the week how they are looking, possibly I'll start cutting next weekend.

 

[vapoholic]

Just a comment on the mainlining. I've looked at several techniques and mainlining seems to fit my approach to things in general. It seems to be a rather exact approach (in terms of how you bind the branches and colas) and the amount of exactness you obtain seems to be a straight function of what you put in so to speak (if that makes sense).
Being a computer developer/engineer I found this method most appealing.
Scrogging seems like another quite exact method as well, so I'll aim for using a scrog net to position and hold up the colas after mainlining is complete (i.e when I have 8 colas per plant).

 

[Noob4x4grow]

I've never heard of mainlining before. I'm looking forward to learning something new. Can you explain the process so a noob like me can understand?

 

[vapoholic]

I rambled on quite nicely there didn't I. Too much wine for dinner today clearly

Assuming I interpreted the forum rules correctly I cannot link to the other forum where I learned about it the first time, so the absolute best thing is to google it since you should see pictures of it to understand it fully.

However, the main idea is to force the plant to focus all it's energy into the nodes you want, trimming away everything else.
So first cut I will cut everything above the 3rd node and everything below, leaving just two branches. Then on those two respectively I will after a while leave only one node and then again only one node on each of them, eventually leaving me with 8 evenly spread out colas for each plant.
Each stage involves tying/binding the plant to give an even canopy.

I'll end with a shot of today. I can also mentioned I replaced Wilma's own blue flooders. I didn't really like them. These yellow ones drip in a circle and seem to wet a larger area (the blue ones did no flooding at all basically).

Also, if you're wondering about the rings hanging from the sides of the pots I added two of those S type rings (closing one end) on each side of each pot, so I would have something to fasten the wire to bind/tie the plants down with.

 

[Noob4x4grow]

Thanks for the info Vapoholic. I will look into it.

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Looking very well indeed

Not sure if you got any oscillating fans in the tent ?

Going to need air flow around the canopy of the plants mainly so in flowering to help avoid bud rot etc as when the canopy gets bigger it kind of traps humidity a little bit, the fans will also help deal with temperature around the area also.

Might need ones of these...

Keeps an eye on RH / temp, high / low periods during lights on, off... some times best to check RH just as when the lights come on as it may spike during lights off period !


Ya don't want high RH above 70% as safe guide line whilst in flowering at any point of time during day/night.

 

[vapoholic]

Looking very well indeed

Not sure if you got any oscillating fans in the tent ?

Going to need air flow around the canopy of the plants mainly so in flowering to help avoid bud rot etc as when the canopy gets bigger it kind of traps humidity a little bit, the fans will also help deal with temperature around the area also.

Might need ones of these...

Keeps an eye on RH / temp, high / low periods during lights on, off... some times best to check RH just as when the lights come on as it may spike during lights off period !


Ya don't want high RH above 70% as safe guide line whilst in flowering at any point of time during day/night.

Yeah I have two fans actually. A smaller fixed one and a larger that can oscillate. I turned off the oscillation however since I wasn't really convinced about the durability (although it would probably be fine), I've managed to position them to get an even but variable flow on all four plants and at the same time without giving them too much.

I have a thermometer with min/max and two sensors (I put one in the middle vertically and the other at the plant's ground level to see the differences) and with one humidity sensor. Going between 45-50% in the day and up to about 60% in the night (which I guess will increase as they get bigger due to the perspiration). If it get much higher, especially when I start with the flowering, I will increase the exhaust fan and eventually also put in some dehumidifier packs I bought.

I had a thermometer extra, so I put one in the water as well, which is around 21.5C at the moment.

 

[vapoholic]

Day 24. I'm quite happy with the growth and node distance at this point