Volksball's First Grow: White Widow Feminized Grow Journal 2018

[West Hippie]

50% and stay at 36”s , do you have a light fan on them , stalk training . If mama’s helping you will survive, makes it easier when your both into it .

If I would have known your light was adjustable, I’d had you start at 50% at begin !

 

[volksball]

50% and stay at 36”s , do you have a light fan on them , stalk training . If mama’s helping you will survive, makes it easier when your both into it .

Yeah, she's great for it. I joke more than anything. She just finished helping me add more ducting so that I can lower the light further.

I do have a few fans in the tent. They blow all around the girls. They flutter lightly.

Thanks for all the tips.

 

[volksball]

Hey guys,

Introducing nutes tomorrow morning. Used half the reco dose as what was listed.

I ran into a bit of trouble trying to adjust my pH and had to add a bunch of up and down to balance around 6.5.

Questions:

Can the amount of pH up or down hurt the plants even though I'm on with my pH? Adding the nutes dropped the pH to way acidic. But I eventually righted the ship, but with a good bit of product.

And, I read that adjusting pH in soil is pointless. The soil will do the work as will the plain tap water. Sounded weird to me, but always worth a read. It claimed the pH up and down products were also harmful to the plants.

Any ideas?

Thx

 

[Emilya Green]

Hey guys,

Introducing nutes tomorrow morning. Used half the reco dose as what was listed.

I ran into a bit of trouble trying to adjust my pH and had to add a bunch of up and down to balance around 6.5.

Questions:

Can the amount of pH up or down hurt the plants even though I'm on with my pH? Adding the nutes dropped the pH to way acidic. But I eventually righted the ship, but with a good bit of product.

And, I read that adjusting pH in soil is pointless. The soil will do the work as will the plain tap water. Sounded weird to me, but always worth a read. It claimed the pH up and down products were also harmful to the plants.

Any ideas?

Thx

6.3 is actually where you should adjust to... and yes, the more up and down you add the more debris is left in the soil because the ppm's go up in your fluid... but that is a very little concern when compared to watering at a pH that doesn't allow your soil to drift through the entire pH range of 6.3-6.8, thereby allowing all of your nutrients to become mobile instead of just a few of them.
Commercial soils are designed to be at the high end of the pH range or buffered, to allow this process to happen. Trying to add things to the soil to change this base pH level is indeed pointless in most cases because if you move it higher it creates too fast of a drift and if you knock it down lower, the drift can fail to happen or even go the wrong way.

 

[volksball]

Thanks for the tips!

I introduced them to the nutrient solution and the pH corrected water this morning.

They look happy to me, though the one girl still likes to grow a bit taller and has wonky leaves, but she seems fine.

Lights at 50% (500w) and 32" from canopy. 24 degrees and 44% RH. pH 6.5.

Day 17

Volksball

 

[Emilya Green]

the nutrient solution and the pH corrected water

just making sure that these were one in the same... and that you are adding the nutrients to the water first and then pH correcting the whole thing before applying it to the plants.

 

[volksball]

just making sure that these were one in the same... and that you are adding the nutrients to the water first and then pH correcting the whole thing before applying it to the plants.

Yep. Should have specified. Added nutes to water, made the water very acidic, corrected back to 6.5.

 

[Emilya Green]

You should be fine, but the math agrees with just a little bit lower pH to get the full benefit.

 

[volksball]

You should be fine, but the math agrees with just a little bit lower pH to get the full benefit.

Yeah, agreed. I was just getting a bit worried about correcting too much. I already had bounced back and forth a bit and worried about adding even more Up and Down.

I'll get better at it, I sure. 6.5 can't be bad for em- just not the ideal.

 

[volksball]

So, I believe that I may have found the solution to my oncoming heat problem. We're good now, but once the lights jack up to 1000w and move closer to the canopy, I'd be in trouble in current setup.

To the chagrin of my better half, I purchased a second 200cfm fan. I will now run an intake from outside the tent, through the light and exhaust out of the tent.

The second fan will be carbon filter dedicated and exhaust out.

I've exchanged my warm mist humidifier for a cool mist one.

If that doesn't bring the heat down, nothing will. Ha.

Will post pics of the new setup once the fan arrives and it gets installed.

Thx.

 

[volksball]

Got em into 2gal new homes.

Day 18

 

[volksball]

Good morning growers,

So, I've held off watering after the pot up to let the roots grow and go find water. I woke up this morning to the soil looking and feeling quite dry in the 2gal pots, but the plants still happy. The soil had shrunk and was getting those dry soil crevasses in it. Anyhow, I fed nute rich and pH balanced water to each, but avoided watering until runoff, as the girls are still quite small for their new homes. I'd hate for water to sit and not be used causing mold and fungus.

I've read that you should water to 20% run off, but might that strategy be a bit early for these girls? Maybe on the next feeding?

Day 20.

Thx.

 

[Emilya Green]

they probably could have handled a full watering at this point, but next time definitely. Watering to 20% runoff is a PITA if you don't have a place for all that water to drain, but it does eliminate the need for flushing as often. It also washes away expensive nutes... so I am not a fan of the practice... but to each his own as they say.

 

[volksball]

they probably could have handled a full watering at this point, but next time definitely. Watering to 20% runoff is a PITA if you don't have a place for all that water to drain, but it does eliminate the need for flushing as often. It also washes away expensive nutes... so I am not a fan of the practice... but to each his own as they say.

Thanks. Should I go back and continue watering? Between the three of them, they took a gallon of water with no run off.

 

[Emilya Green]

I would.. the rule i follow for new plants to to water out to 3x their diameter... and right now, that would be the entire container. After that you can start carefully monitoring how long it takes them each time to drain all that water and you have a set standard to go by, the saturation of that medium.

 

[volksball]

I would.. the rule i follow for new plants to to water out to 3x their diameter... and right now, that would be the entire container. After that you can start carefully monitoring how long it takes them each time to drain all that water and you have a set standard to go by, the saturation of that medium.

Ok thanks. So I did just and got a slight bit of run off. I took a pH test of the run off and saw that I'm acidic. Somewhere in the 5s. That's obviously too low, but what can I do at this point but wait for the next feeding and bring up my pH in the water over 7ish to balance? Or am I in trouble at this point?

 

[Emilya Green]

Ok thanks. So I did just and got a slight bit of run off. I took a pH test of the run off and saw that I'm acidic. Somewhere in the 5s. That's obviously too low, but what can I do at this point but wait for the next feeding and bring up my pH in the water over 7ish to balance? Or am I in trouble at this point?

Volksball,
All your pH test of the runoff told you is that just like your coffee pot does, your soil percolated that water through your soil and added quite a bit to it as it ran out of the bottom. Of course it is a different pH than what you expected, but that does not indicate a problem at all!! That low number actually indicates a high peat content of your soil, some of which has broken down, lowering the pH of the runoff. Do not adjust your soil. Your soil is doing what it is supposed to do. That runoff pH number means nothing... and all it can do is confuse you. Runoff pH is meaningless. Totally and completely meaningless. It doesn't even indicate the base pH of your soil, which you need to do a slurry test to determine.

Just make sure that when you water you have adjusted its pH to 6.3. Pay no attention for a second what the pH of the soil is, but I am assuming that its base pH is up at the high point in the 6.3-6.8 range. At the moment that you water, the pH of the container has no choice but to assume the pH of the water you have saturated it at. If you set your water pH to 6.3, then that is the pH of that container of saturated soil. The base pH of the soil comes into play as the soil begins to dry, starting at the top and working its way down through the container as the plant uses the water. As the soil dries, it loses the pH influence of your adjusted water, and it starts to drift toward the base pH of the soil, and this is the desired goal... to move your pH during each wet/dry cycle through the entire range. You don't adjust the soil to make this happen.... you water every time at the proper pH, and let the soil do its job.

 

[volksball]

Volksball,
All your pH test of the runoff told you is that just like your coffee pot does, your soil percolated that water through your soil and added quite a bit to it as it ran out of the bottom. Of course it is a different pH than what you expected, but that does not indicate a problem at all!! That low number actually indicates a high peat content of your soil, some of which has broken down, lowering the pH of the runoff. Do not adjust your soil. Your soil is doing what it is supposed to do. That pH number means nothing... and all it can do is confuse you. Runoff pH is meaningless. Totally and completely meaningless. It doesn't even indicate the base pH of your soil, which you need to do a slurry test to determine.

Just make sure that when you water you have adjusted its pH to 6.3. Pay no attention for a second what the pH of the soil is, but I am assuming that its base pH is up at the high point in the 6.3-6.8 range. At the moment that you water, the pH of the container has no choice but to assume the pH of the water you have saturated it at. If you set your water pH to 6.3, then that is the pH of that container of saturated soil. The base pH of the soil comes into play as the soil begins to dry, starting at the top and working its way down through the container as the plant uses the water. As the soil dries, it loses the pH influence of your adjusted water, and it starts to drift toward the base pH of the soil, and this is the desired goal... to move your pH during each wet/dry cycle through the entire range. You don't adjust the soil to make this happen.... you water every time at the proper pH, and let the soil do its job.

Ok. Thanks for the tips! That's all great advice!

I did, foolishly, flush the soil with 8.0 water before I read this and now know not to do so. It really confuses me on what to do and what not to do. In another forum, I was told to flush immediately.

I will do nothing from here to the next watering, but should I be concerned with the flush I just did? Or leave it be and go back to my original pH adjusted water on the next go?

And further, I likely over watered trying to flush. I imagine that the perlite and grow bags will do well to promote drying, but I dont imagine that my soil will see water again for 5 days.

 

[Emilya Green]

The only thing to be gained by this advice from another forum is to now consider the source and learn from that experience. There are a lot of bad forums out there and there is a reason that this one has become the number one resource and most popular cannabis forum in the world. If I gave you bad advice here, 10 people would jump on and tell you why I was wrong. BS stops here on this large global forum, whereas on other smaller boards, a strong vocal member can easily shout down good advice and I have even seen forums with "official plant doctors" giving terrible advice, and to preserve peace, none of the other members challenge them.
Even here, you get a lot of opinions sometimes and sadly I even see bad advice. When I see it, I call them on it, to preserve the integrity of what we do here. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't... and if someone doesn't seem receptive to my help, I back off and let them learn on their own. Proof is in the pudding as they say, and I would check out anyone who was giving me advice to make sure they knew what they were talking about.
Well, you did the flush, the go to fix and number one advice coming out of those who are weak at diagnosing problems, and of course it isn't going to change much... actually all you did is water your plants while removing any traces of nourishment that might have been available to the plants. Let them dry out and know that they probably will be hungry or at least willing to accept some strong nutes, on the next watering.

 

[Emilya Green]

I don't imagine that my soil will see water again for 5 days.

You are learning fast... yes, just consider this a thorough watering and we go on from here with some cleaned out containers. Not a crisis. Luckily the commonly given panacea to flush, is not generally harmful.