WC's 1st Time Grow with 400w HPS/MH Think Different Autoflower

WyldeChylde said:
Heya Capn. First let me say it's an honor to have you in my thread. I didn't get a chance to say that before I'm definitely a huge fan.

You do realize these are autoflowers? they don't like to be topped or chopped ;)

My next grow is going to be modeled off your setup with the 5 gal buckets and separate res. Hopefully I'll have a better light as well.
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So sorry, WC, your thread subject clearly states auto flower. I wasn't paying attention and haven't had my coffee yet today :)

In that case, to answer your question, yes, I would start to transition now! Good luck and I'm looking forward to seeing them go. You will be surprised what that 400 will do, especially with no glass in front of it.
 
Just a couple of day 23 Shots. I noticed Righty starting to pack on some structure. She may catch up to lefty in size after all.

I've done some leaf tucking on both plants to expose bud sites. Hope I did it right.


Lefty
IMG_20140213_231035_423.jpg


Righty
IMG_20140213_231043_681.jpg
 
Day 26 both plants are trooping right along.

I've got pistils on both plants so it looks like the next res change will be swapping to bloom schedule.

Pics later.
 
Hey man those autos are looking amazing so far. I joined just to tell you that plus I've been coming here for awhile and finally decided to create an account, but those beauties you have going look great. All I do is grow autos, I've grown atleast 50 different strains of autos. I read somewhere it's good not to crop them but I'll be the first to tell you I have cropped almost every auto I have grown except low Ryder's but will be cropping some berry Ryder's I got going and will post the results of cropping. I'm not saying you should crop yours but I had great results cropping mine everytime. The vendor will usually state if they can be cropped which most can be cropped. Just look for grams per square meter in the description and those are usually the ones you can crop recommended by the breeder. I usually crop mine after the first set of 5 leaves appear. I will be following your journal. I wish you the best of success and by what I see you are doing awesome!
 
AutoMan said:
Hey man those autos are looking amazing so far. I joined just to tell you that plus I've been coming here for awhile and finally decided to create an account, but those beauties you have going look great. All I do is grow autos, I've grown atleast 50 different strains of autos. I read somewhere it's good not to crop them but I'll be the first to tell you I have cropped almost every auto I have grown except low Ryder's but will be cropping some berry Ryder's I got going and will post the results of cropping. I'm not saying you should crop yours but I had great results cropping mine everytime. The vendor will usually state if they can be cropped which most can be cropped. Just look for grams per square meter in the description and those are usually the ones you can crop recommended by the breeder. I usually crop mine after the first set of 5 leaves appear. I will be following your journal. I wish you the best of success and by what I see you are doing awesome!
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Hey thanks for the kind words man. I decided not to crop or screw with my plants in any real way other than leaf tucking since it's my first grow. I don't want to do anything that may result in a mistake and reduce my yields. I've already had root slime to deal with and that was enough. So I figure to just let them do their thing and expose bud sites as needed. I also want to make sure I have something to carry me through my next grow which I'm already eyeballing.

Thanks for stopping by.


WC
 
so today being day 28 and since both plants are showing a goodish amount of pistils I'm going to be changing out the res to start bloom feeding. Pics later.
 
Day 28.

So I swapped the buckets over to a bloom ratio of jungle juice went 1-2-3 of the GMB which gave me aprox 850ppm with just the macronutes with the rest of the adds my PPMs are about 1100 or so.

I also swapped out my metal halide bulb for a high pressure sodium bulb which turns out was DOA. So had to high tail it to Home Depot for a HPS replacement bulb. Phillips 400watt HPS bulb for 25 bucks is pretty cool. Plants didn't have any direct light for a couple hours, but that shouldn't affect anything. I'll throw up some pics tomorrow. Time to go scrape out my bowl.
 
WyldeChylde said:
Day 28.

So I swapped the buckets over to a bloom ratio of jungle juice went 1-2-3 of the GMB which gave me aprox 850ppm with just the macronutes with the rest of the adds my PPMs are about 1100 or so.

I also swapped out my metal halide bulb for a high pressure sodium bulb which turns out was DOA. So had to high tail it to Home Depot for a HPS replacement bulb. Phillips 400watt HPS bulb for 25 bucks is pretty cool. Plants didn't have any direct light for a couple hours, but that shouldn't affect anything. I'll throw up some pics tomorrow. Time to go scrape out my bowl.
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WC,

1100 is very high for hydro, and I would only go that high in the 6-8th week of flower, and only then if I was 100% sure the strain needed it. I'm in my second week of flower and I just now raised my ppm from 650 to 700 (at a .5 conversion). Just a suggestion, as I would hate for you to dehydrate your leaf tips and stunt growth. Remember, the directions on the bottle are usually way out of whack!

Also, when you have branches that are shaded by fan leaves, this causes those shaded branches to stretch, and they will blast right through the fan leaf and even up the canopy. If you tuck fan leaves, you will slow down those from stretching and those branches will stay shorter. I have pictures demonstrating this, somewhere in the middle of africangrower's journal, but not sure what page.

That said, your plants are looking stellar, my friend. You are so lucky you were able to head off the slime. Ask anyone who has had a bout with root rot.... you don't know how lucky you are!

I was standing in lowes looking at the 400W HPS bulb last night! Let me know how it does.

Cap
 
this is what I put into my res yesterday for bloom changeover

per 3 gallons/11 liters of water

11ml of Grow
22ml of Micro
33ml of Bloom
22ml of Carbo Load
22ml of Rhino Skin
15ml of CalMag
22ml of VooDoo Juice
22ml of B52
1/2 tsp of Great White
4 cups of Tea

Am I to assume that I want my my bud stems to stretch through the canopy?

I got extremely lucky with the root slime in correctly diagnosing it and treating it within 24 hrs. I almost went the Sensizyme route which I feel would have doomed my plants if I had added it to the res.

The 400 HPS so far from Home Depot is decent I suppose, at least it works. I believe it also is rated for 55k lumens same as all the other "super duper impressive bazillion lumens" lamps out there lol.

I'm going to be checking on my plants in a moment so I'll check the PPM's in the res and check the plant over for any nute burn.

In the event that I do have to swap out my res what would you suggest for dosage?
 
>>>Am I to assume that I want my my bud stems to stretch through the canopy?

You said you were leaf tucking. I'm assuming you are doing that to get more light to the lower branches. What I'm saying is that will actually slow down their stretch. So if you want those lower branches to stretch out and even up the canopy, I would just leave it alone. But up to you.

>>>In the event that I do have to swap out my res what would you suggest for dosage?

Next time you mix up nutrients, I would use the same recipe but use 1/2 of the G.M.B.
5ml of Grow
10ml of Micro
15ml of Bloom

For now, if you want to lower ppm (it's parts per million, not parts per millionS), I would take a gallon or two of nutrient water out of each bucket, and replace with plain water with only 4ml/gal cal mag.

Personally, I wouldn't run carbo load directly in the bucket. This COULD provide food for bad bacteria. I do like all your other ingredients though. Typically we don't want to feed good bacteria in the reservoir. This is the reason we brew tea, to build up a super colony outside the res, then introduce only the bacteria (in theory, they have eaten most of the food) to the root zone.

Check the temps of your bucket water before you do anything and make sure they are under 72.
 
TheCapn said:
>>>Am I to assume that I want my my bud stems to stretch through the canopy?

You said you were leaf tucking. I'm assuming you are doing that to get more light to the lower branches. What I'm saying is that will actually slow down their stretch. So if you want those lower branches to stretch out and even up the canopy, I would just leave it alone. But up to you.

>>>In the event that I do have to swap out my res what would you suggest for dosage?

Next time you mix up nutrients, I would use the same recipe but use 1/2 of the G.M.B.
5ml of Grow
10ml of Micro
15ml of Bloom

For now, if you want to lower ppm (it's parts per million, not parts per millionS), I would take a gallon or two of nutrient water out of each bucket, and replace with plain water with only 4ml/gal cal mag.

Personally, I wouldn't run carbo load directly in the bucket. This COULD provide food for bad bacteria. I do like all your other ingredients though. Typically we don't want to feed good bacteria in the reservoir. This is the reason we brew tea, to build up a super colony outside the res, then introduce only the bacteria (in theory, they have eaten most of the food) to the root zone.

Check the temps of your bucket water before you do anything and make sure they are under 72.
Click to expand...

I was doing the leaf tucking because I wanted more light to hit the lower budsites but if it doesn't really matter one way or the other then I'd prefer to have one less thing to do ;)

I did run carbo load directly in the res which is what I believe led me to the previous case of root slime. At the time I was using just the voodoo juice and was under the mistaken impression that the bennies woke up upon hitting the res and where good to go for a weeks time. I'm adding directly to the res now because I'm using both the activated tea as well as concentrated shots of the GW and the VDJ I figure the carbo load will help to extend the lives of the bennies as well as give the plants a boost of sugar. I still have the Big Bud to add to the res but that's either next week or the week after.

It's hard to believe in 6 days I'll be half way through this grow. It's even harder to believe that in 40-50 days I'll be staring at ,hopefully, quite a lot of bud.
 
so it's day 30 only 40ish more to go

Plants are both growing like champs between the 2 of them their drinking about a gallon of water every 2 days. I just topped off with a gallon of stump tea from the hydro store half a gallon to each plant through the root crown. Each plant is hairing up pretty well hopefully I start seeing a nice growth spurt soon.

sucks being out of weed
 
I feel your pain brother, I am in the same boat, 4 or 5 more weeks till harvest and I don't have enought weed to hold me over. I don't mind so much but the wife gets a little cranky when we are out,haha. Last harvest I stached away a few nugs all I need do now is find them.lol
:peace: plants look great btw!
 
G-daddy said:
I feel your pain brother, I am in the same boat, 4 or 5 more weeks till harvest and I don't have enought weed to hold me over. I don't mind so much but the wife gets a little cranky when we are out,haha. Last harvest I stached away a few nugs all I need do now is find them.lol
:peace: plants look great btw!
Click to expand...

thanks for the kind words.

PH both plants at 5.8
PPM both plants aprox 1100

Righty has some slightly spreading calcium deficiency dosed both plants with some CalMag.

Also noticing some Leaf tip downward clawing on the newer growth near the top of the plant on righty. Possible nitrogen deficiency? Have to look into it.

Lefty doing fine as always.

added .5 gal to each plant and 2 cups tea each plant as well.
 
WyldeChylde said:
thanks for the kind words.

PH both plants at 5.8
PPM both plants aprox 1100

Righty has some slightly spreading calcium deficiency dosed both plants with some CalMag.

Also noticing some Leaf tip downward clawing on the newer growth near the top of the plant on righty. Possible nitrogen deficiency? Have to look into it.

Lefty doing fine as always.

added .5 gal to each plant and 2 cups tea each plant as well.
Click to expand...

Clawing leaves are a sign of the PPM being too high, or the water being too warm. Listen now and believe it later: "1100 is very high for hydro, and I would only go that high in the 6-8th week of flower, and only then if I was 100% sure the strain needed it. Check the temps of your bucket water before you do anything and make sure they are under 72."

I've never heard of anyone adding as much tea as you're adding. Typically, for DWC, the suggested dose is 8oz a couple times a week. Did someone suggest you use that much tea? Trust me, I think beneficial tea is the way to go in DWC, but I don't know if you will run into any consequences by adding too much.

>>>I'm adding directly to the res now because I'm using both the activated tea as well as concentrated shots of the GW and the VDJ I figure the carbo load will help to extend the lives of the bennies as well as give the plants a boost of sugar.

It is best to only feed the beneficials outside the reservoir. Sugary products can trigger a slime outbreak. There are good AND bad bacteria in the bucket. So we try to STARVE the bad bacteria in the res.

I won't bother you with any more advice on high PPM or carbs / sugar products. Proceed at your own risk ;-)
 

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