Tom420 White Widow & Northern Lights #5 x Haze Scrog In Coco 2017

[tom420]

Hello growers!

I have decided I need to run a journal along with this grow. Actually I'm already 3 weeks from germination and started getting some problems. I don't want to start a separate thread for each of these issues and many more I expect to encounter as I progress. So I thought a journal might be a good idea and that perhaps good people on this forum will offer some help and advice to get me out of trouble.

This is my second grow. My first was some 6 months ago when I grew one plant, Skunk #1 Auto in coco under 130W Citizen COB with some help of adjacent Mars Hydro Reflector 96 (183W draw) that was there for my hot pepper plants growing just next to the Skunk. Peppers were my training ground to practice germination, repotting, PH and EC, temps and humidity, lighting, etc., before I would start with my precious cannabis seeds. That Skunk grow exceeded my wildest expectations - no problems whatsoever - topped it once, light LST and just let it grow - no deficiencies, no nute burns, no pests, no nothing - pulled some 180g dried bud from that one auto plant in 80 days from seed!

Well, nothing could be easier, right?! WRONG!
I decided to do a two plant scrog. And right from the start - seedlings stretching, nute burn, deficiencies and fungus gnats. And I thought I was an expert already ha ha

Ok then, let's start.

As title says, I have White Widow Fem (White Label Seeds) and Northern Lights #5 x Haze Fem (Sensi Seeds).
I want to do a scrog in my 3'x4' grow tent.
I'm planning to veg to 2 months, perhaps 6 weeks if they grow big.
Flower time should be ca. 60 days for WW and 70 for NL5xH (according to Sensi).

As for the lights I have:
1. Mars Hydro Reflector 96 (5W leds) - 183 watt draw max
2. Citizen COB CLU048-1818C4 with few supplemental red Crees - 128 watts draw
3. 3x Citizen COB CLU04H-85/200-PRB that I built myself - 230 watts draw
I want to hang Mars Hydro over the NL5xH, my DIY 3xCOB light over WW, and that single Citizen COB somewhere in between.
That should give me some 540 watts of LED power draw over 12 sq ft - 45 watts per sq ft.

I am using Canna Coco Pro Plus mixed with 30% perlite.
For the final pot I'm thinking 4,5 gallon smart pots - feel free to suggest a different size. I have 3 gallon and 7 gallons smart pots at hand so I could use any of these sizes. But from a lot of reading I decided on 4,5 gallon.

For the nutrients I am using Canna line - Coco A&B, Rhizotonic, Cannazym, Boost, PK13/14, Mono Ca and Mono Mg. Obviously, I am not using Boots and PK13/14 just yet, but that's the plan anyway.

My previous grow was with GH Flora line and it turned out perfect. But my hydro shop only had GH nutrients with 2015 date printed on the bottle and I am not sure if that's production year or validity. Additionally, Grow component was having some heavy crystallization on the bottom (I hear I should mix it with hot water and all will be fine). Anyway, that crystallization along with suspicious 2015 date on the bottle made me switch to Canna - 2020 year looked so fresh

Other details:
Tent is 3x4x6' (90x120x180cm, I'm in metric btw)
Extraction fan is TD Silent with temp sensor, 135 - 200 cfm (230 - 340 m3/h)
235 cfm (400 m3/h) carbon filter
Passive inlets only
PH pen, TDS meter
Humidifier - for seedlings and early veg
Dehumidifier - for flower
Thermometers, humidistats, thermostats, timers and power meters - it's 21st century after all, right?

That's it for this first introductory post.
Next post(s) I will go over my progress so far with pictures, feeding details, etc.

Cheers all!

 

[Pennywise]

re: Tom420 White Widow & Northern Lights #5 x Haze Scrog In Coco 2017

I'll ride along with this grow show

 

[tom420]

re: Tom420 White Widow & Northern Lights #5 x Haze Scrog In Coco 2017

Great to have you pennywise!
Jumping into you journals right now. I sense some advanced stuff based on the titles alone! Great - I love to learn about this new hobby of mine as much as I can!

 

[tom420]

re: Tom420 White Widow & Northern Lights #5 x Haze Scrog In Coco 2017

Ok, so germination.

But first, a short story ...

Exactly a year ago I went on a business trip to one of the major European cities (I'm in Europe so it wasn't far, I went by car). Coming back from work one night, just next to the hotel I noticed these vending machines for ... seeds! WTF, I thought. It didn't even occur to me they might be marijuana! I was sure these were your ordinary vegetable seeds like carrots, lettuce, whatever. It seemed strange that people in this certain city needed 24/7 access to vegetable seeds for their little balcony gardens but hell, to each their own - maybe that's their culture. Well, next night I was curious what exactly these seeds were and BAM! MJ! Holly shit, I thought I'd get arrested just for looking at them! Run to the hotel. But didn't go to bed - I spent whole night reading about growing. I was hooked! I knew what I was going to buy next day. Comes next night and ... What? No credit cards accepted? Shit! Spent one hour looking for an ATM. Oh, I'm so glad now they didn't accept credit cards. I was an idiot to even consider using my plastic. What was I thinking?

Oh well, the rest is history ha ha. Came back home, practiced on hot peppers for 3 months and finally grew this Skunk #1 Auto I mentioned in my first post. The rest of the seeds went to the fridge.

And so, three weeks ago I took two of these one year refrigerated seeds and soaked them in lukewarm water (RO water + Rhizotonic @ 300ppm 6.0ph) for 12 hours, on a heating matt. Both seeds sunk nicely after 4 - 5 hours, with a little help of a gentle tap. Next day I put them in rooting plugs and placed them on that heating matt hooked to a thermostat, under a humidity dome - aiming for around 80F (27C) and 75 - 80% RH. I have put this humidity dome under Citizen COB light (128 watts) 27 inches (70cm) above the seeds - just to make sure they get light from the very moment they are above ground. And in two days ... Houston, we have a lift-off!

That's the same procedure I used when growing Skunk - it worked then and it worked now. So that's what I'm advocating. So far it's 100% germination rate for me ha ha. I don't care what any of you mathematicians out there might think about my 3 seeds sample size - it's 100% germination rate no matter what you say

By the way, first rooting plugs I bought when growing peppers and Skunk (a year ago) were just sitting in my cupboard wrapped in plastic. I bought some new ones some time later and put them in the fridge like instructions said. The ones in the cupboard were the ones I finally used as the ones in the fridge were all covered in mold! Lesson learned.

About my strain choices - White Widow (35% Sativa / 65% Indica) and Northern Lights #5 x Haze (70% Sativa / 30% Indica). I know I'm asking for trouble planning to run these two different strains under one scrog net. I know. NL#5xH supposedly stretches a lot in flower, WW not so much - it might be a pain but I'm willing to try. I want to try these strains, compare the effects. I only want to grow during late fall/winter months so if I grew one strain now it would be another year before I could grow another. I'll take my chances. Actually, three weeks in and it seems these pains begin sooner than expected! It looks to my untrained eye that they want a different feeding! But we'll get to that.

Photo below is them at day 3, moved to little plastic cups.
Clay pebbles should prevent coco from drying too quickly, especially as I had a fan already blowing at them from a distance - just so that they move slightly in the breeze.
Temperature set to 76F (24,5C) and RH to 60%.
Lights initially set to 24/0 for a week to get them going. I have put a stronger light above them - Mars Hydro at 183 watts as they looked a bit leggy to me when compared to that Skunk I grew before.

Ok, this post is got way too long! So that's it for now. I don't want you to fall asleep!

tbc ...

Cheers all!

 

[tom420]

First days after germination were rather uneventful - which is a good thing I suppose. However, at day 6, despite the stronger light, seedlings stretched quite a bit and I was afraid Northern Lights #5 x Haze (let me call her NL from now on) would topple. So faced with a decision to support them with some sticks or bury them deeper I went with the latter - I decided to pot them up into 3 liter Air Pots (0.8 gallon).

Below is the comparison of my Skunk #1 at 5 days vs my current girls at day 5. Skunk's "picture in picture" is more or less to scale.

At day 6 it was even worse.
So here they are 3 days after repotting:

In retrospect I think I have buried them too deep. Now, at day 25 they are so low it's bloody hard to get that watering bottle in there! It looks like the roots have pulled the plants even deeper! Cotyledon leaves are almost underground now!

I have been feeding them rather lightly at around 350ppm, once a day, always getting a good runoff (more than 30%).

At day 9 I have added that Citizen COB light so they were now getting light from both the COB and Mars Hydro - 312 watts total draw. I have changed the light schedule from 24/0 to 20/4 to give them some dark period finally.

I have topped them at day 17, which was 2 - 3 days after they have grown 5 sets of true leaves. I have topped them between 4th and 5th node. Here they are, one day after topping:

And on that very day I found ... FUNGUS GNATS!

I didn't realize at first this nasty little thing (there was just one) flying around could even be fungus gnat. I was sure that was a fruit fly! I thought fungus gnats must the thing of the tropics! No way I would ever get them at my latitude. So I killed that first one thinking it was a fruit fly. It was dead before it could blink! Oh well, given that it had no eyelids, I took my time to chase it around my room Sure enough, few hours later - another one! Dead in an instant! Another! What the hell is going on? I don't even have a trashcan in the room where I'm growing, let alone rotten fruits lying around! So I went to the kitchen, caught one REAL fruit fly. Back in my room I caught that THING flying around and both of them went under my trichome microscope. Seeing them enlarged revealed the horrifying truth - I HAVE FUNGUS GNATS! Here they are - both of those little fuckers:

I started to read all about fungus gnats. There are quite a few ways to get rid of them but I found this article: []404 | Hydroponics
It looked to me like the guy really knew what he was talking about. He strongly recommended a product called Spinosad. Apparently it is organic (produced by bacteria) and was discovered by accident quite recently (a relative term 'recently' I know ):

From: A Warm and Fuzzy Insecticide Piece Part 1
The origins of spinosad came from a pirate's best friend—a rum distillery. While on vacation in the Caribbean in 1982, a scientist discovered a soil dwelling bacterium called Saccharopolyspora spinosa in the abandoned distillery. In 1988, the bacteria was placed in a fermentation broth, producing a compound that has since been formed into an insecticide with the added plus of being a biological pest control organism.

One thing to keep in mind however is that it should not, technically, be used in "medical" marijuana grows, as cannabis is not explicitly listed in Spinosad documentation as a plant on which Spinosad can be used. Interestingly, in the original article I linked above, author gives a "word of caution about a few commonly recommended Fungus Gnat control options". Really a good read if you ever get Fungus Gnats in your grow.

I have searched for quite a while before finally coming across a shop that would sell Spinosad in my city - there was only one shop that had it - and as luck would have it - on the opposite side of the city. Of course, where else? Oh well. I went to buy it anyway but ended up ... not using it (at least not yet). I realized that I actually had just a few of these Fungus Gnats flying around. Finally, I settled for yellow sticky cards to first determine how big my problem really was. It turned out that I have never caught a single gnat in my grow tent. The only ones I caught were just TRYING to get into my grow tent through the air inlet mesh. Especially the inlet closer to the door. So it looked to me they were just coming from the outside and had not really infested my grow yet. Well, at least I have that Spinosad ready to treat the bastards as soon as I see them around my plants!

Next journal episode ... burns and deficiencies - at the same time!

Cheers!

 

[Pennywise]

Good job catching them critters early.

 

[tom420]

Hi all,

Long time no see. Sorry for this, if anyone is checking this thread. I've been busy tending to my girls - you understand

I need to speed up with this journal and finally catch up with real-time so that I can ask for some advice when I need it. No point in asking for advice for something that happened a month ago, right?

So this is a catch up post. Quick and to the point. No stories and no blah, blah.

Ok, regarding fungus gnats from last post - I am still using yellow sticky traps to catch those few that try to get into my grow tent. I have one of those yellow traps inside the grow tent as well and I haven't caught a single gnat in there so that's good news.

Now, about those deficiencies and nutrient burns I mentioned last time - to make a long story short - I was feeding at ca. 400 ppm and Northern Lights x Haze seemed happy with that, however White Widow developed what looked like calcium deficiency. So I upped the feed to 750 ppm - 200 ppm was Ca and Mg (I'm using Canna Mono Ca and Mg). The rest was Canna A + B with a little contribution from Rhizotonic and Cannazym. Sure enough, few days later I had nutrient burns on both my plants! I have sort of flushed them at 300 ppm of Canna A + B + Ca + Mg + Flora Kleen and started feeding 500 ppm. They seemed to like it. I decided to keep that feeding strength until I would see some signs for deficiencies. And just about two days ago I think I have noticed just that - a Ca def on WW again. NL seems to be more tolerant to either not enough or too much feeding. So I upped the feed to 600 ppm (I'm on .5 conversion btw, so that's 1.2 EC).

Here is what I think was a Ca def on WW:

And here are slightly burned NL tips from the same feed:

Also, NL started to wilt a bit. I don't know what could be the reason for that. Is it really possible to overwater in 3 liter Air Pots of Coco? I don't think so, but it sure looked like overwatering. Here is a pic:

I have cut all the leaves that showed any signs pf deficiencies or wilt just because I didn't like how they looked Anyway, increased airflow never hurt any plant, right?

I have read somewhere that dogs love MJ leaves. They would beg to get some to eat. Well, my dog has no interest in them at all! And she is a hungry bitch (female dog I mean ), let me tell you! She would eat all and any garbage she can find, including grass, paper, anything really ... but she has no interest in ganja at all! What a strange dog she must be!

Ok, I promised no stories, so enough about the dog!

More catching up ...

On day 28 (from seed) I have repotted the plants to their final containers which are 4,5 gallon (17 liters) Smart Pots. Below are pics of the roots on both WW and NL when taken out of the Air Pots they have been growing in - NL had roots much more developed than WW and I could see that difference in the amount of water she was drinking - about 1.5x times as much as WW. Not much difference above the ground though but perhaps she was preparing to explode in her final pot!

Also, on the same day as repotting, I have installed all my lights to shine on them. So that means Mars Hydro Reflector 96, Citizen COB and the one I made myself - 3x Citizen horticulture COBs. All on full power (ca. 540 watts total draw) at around 18 inches (48 cm) distance from canopy.

Pictures below show roots of both of them at transplant:

White Widow:

NL5xHaze:

And here a pic of them both right after transplanting. NL on the left, WW on the right. Sorry about the creepy LED lighting.

And on day 34 I have installed a scrog screen. My first attempt was to make it out of PVC pipe but I have found PVC pipe to bend a lot when trying to tighten the strings. I was losing some 8 inches due to this bent along the longer edge! So I went with a wooden frame instead. Here they are under the screen three days later, day 37 from seed (2 days ago). Btw, I have two bigger fans blowing on them from above:

I am watering them by hand two times a day - 3 - 4 hours after lights on and 3 - 4 hours before lights out, 2 liters for WW and 2,5 liters for NL each time (that gives some 25 - 40% runoff). Over the next three days wifey is going to perform the watering and scrog weaving duties! Fingers crossed, hoping to find my girls in good health after coming back from a 3 day business trip.

And when I'm back I'm going to install a DIY drip watering system and switch them girls to flower. They will be exactly 6 weeks old so I guess that's enough veg time for NL. Or too much perhaps even, as I read NL can stretch a lot in flower. But she's been topped twice so I hope that will restrict her a bit.

Perhaps I would veg them a week longer but I have a hard stop to this grow - I'm going skiing on 10th February and I would like to dry them and then cure for at least a week before I go. That would give me a chance to burp the jars for a week and let 62% Boveda packs take care of the buds during my skiing week. So given 75 days flowering time for NL I really need to switch them to flower this coming weekend. I simply have no one to care for them when I'm gone. Wifey and kids are coming with me. Dog is smart but there is a limit to what she can do. Not to mention she might suddenly develop a taste for sugar leaves and eat it all.

Ok, so with this post we are real-time finally! Good for me, as I can now ask for your support in case of any troubles or questions. I'm sure these will come!

Cheers all!

 

[tom420]

Anybody's got any bright ideas on how to lower my grow tent humidity? Save for buying an AC unit, that is. Unfortunately, I can't imagine how this bloody humidity could be brought down without breaking the laws of physics. Oh well, I'm already breaking other laws just growing this stuff, so I don't mind breaking some more.

I'm just about to flip to flower this weekend and my humidity is at 68 - 70%! That would be waaaay too high for flower, right?

My grow tent is 3'x4'x5' with two passive intakes and one outtake fan 235 cfm (more than enough for this size tent I believe).
I am using dehumidifier on full power all the time - day and night. And it's a real one, not some Peltier toy. This dehumidifier is outside the tent, dehumidifying air in my room. I tried to put it inside the tent but it heats things so much I need to crank air exchange to the max and that in turn quickly gets rid of dehumidified air replacing it with cooler but humid air from the room.
So it doesn't really matter if I put dehumidifier in or out of tent.

Just until last weekend I had my outtake fan blowing hot and humid air from the tent right back into my room (which is not too big). Room was heating up and dehumidifier was doing what it could to take out all the water plants were drinking (and hence transpiring) in a day - around 1,6 gallons total.

So last Moday I arranged for this air to be vented outside the window. I was sure that would help a lot - getting rid of all the humid and hot air. But it didn't help! How come?

The only thing that seems to help, if only a little, is opening the window and letting cool November air in. Unfortunately this November is unusually warm and it rains all the freaking time - 90% humidity outside. But 90% humidity in 50F (10C) becomes 42% humidity in 71F (22C) - so that would be good. But somehow it still only helps a bit. By the way, opening the window renders dehumidifier useless - I'm not going to dehumidify the whole planet through my open window!

I'm lost!
If this rainy weather doesn't go away I'm gonna have mold all over my buds!

At least I have plenty of air movement in the tent - 2 smaller fans blowing under the scrog net and two large ones blowing from above - one for each plant.

So yes, any ideas are welcome!
But please, just don't mention AC, because the day I buy such a unit this journal immediately goes to Abandoned Journals due to author having been murdered by wifey on the spot!

Cheers all!

 

[tom420]

Hi all,

I just came back from a few days business trip and found my girls in a pretty good shape. Wifey did quite a good job weaving the branches through the screen and has been watering two times a day till 30% runoff. Plants grew considerably during those few days so I still had to spend good few hours placing the branches where I thought they should go in the screen. I have also cleared a lot of growth under the screen. With my high humidity I think it will be good for the plants to have more ventilation. And anyway, those lower parts weren't getting much light.

Here they are on 6th November:

And here this morning, 5 days later, already tucked under the screen:

Here is how they look under the screen, after a pruning session:

Northern Lights #5 x Haze:

White Widow:

However I did not even ask wifey to check PH level of the feed that I have prepared for those few days. No way she would agree to check it let alone adjust it Oh, well, she did good job nonetheless. But PH of the feed creeped up to a whooping 6.5 and I think that may have caused a deficiency on ever so sensitive White Widow. I think it looks like an iron deficiency. Only relatively newer leaves are affected. Here is a photo:

Hopefully it is really caused just by that high PH and I am not taking any drastic measures trying to correct it other than just adjusting current feeds to exactly 5.8 PH. I have started adding Canna Boost today. So I am currently giving them Canna Coco A + B, Mono Ca, Mono Mg, Rhizotonic, Cannazym, Boost. Seems like a lot but I'm keeping EC equal to 1.2 (using RO water). The only thing is that when disposing of the runoff I feel like pouring cash down the drain!

I am planning to switch to 12/12 tomorrow. Looking at NL5xH I think I might be a bit late. Still, I hope she will fit in my grow tent.

Also, the plan for tomorrow is to finally get my DIY drip watering system running.

 

[tom420]

How did that old Johnny Cash song go?

Weed is a burning thing
So I made a watering ring
Bound by wild desire
To grow weed that will get me higher

Right ... ok, enough of Johnny Cash poetry for now.
But that's what I have just made - a watering ring. Two rings actually.
Took me few more days than expected. I have tried few different designs, testing how each one behaves with the water pump I have (Syncra 1.0 Pump: 251gph, 5' max head, 2.17psi). Finally I have settled for a watering ring I have made from Gardena 3/16" micro-drip supply pipe in which I have made small holes with a heated metal spike. Really simple but seems to be quite effective so far (only two days using it though). I have used two small valves on 3/16" line so I can adjust the flow for each of the two plants individually.

I have two pumps in my rez - both on timers - one for mixing the solution from time to time, and second for feeding, of course - both timers have second resolution - I don't need it for the mixing one, but I do for precise feeding on the feeding pump. I want to feed four times during lights on - first three with minimal runoff, last one with substantial runoff (ca. 30% of daily feed). I am still dialing this in.

I love to sit back and just watch this watering happening all by itself, instead of crouching below the scrog net hand watering in the back of the containers.

Here is a pic of my watering setup:

Other than this, I have switched to flower 4 days ago, as planned. I am still weaving the plants through the scrog screen. I read I should continue doing it for up to three weeks. However it's been just four days since the flip and I am quickly running out of the scrog space. Perhaps two more days and I will leave them girls alone and just let them grow. Here is what they looked like on the day I switched to flower, so 4 days ago:

And here they are today, 4 days after the above pic:

As for the deficiencies I have mentioned in my last post, I have upped my feeding a little. New growth seems healthy and old, affected growth ... oh well ... it's been defoliated No but seriously, I think I really need to clean up my canopy every day, otherwise it's a total mess of thousands of leaves, no light penetration, no airflow. Plants don't seem to notice and just continue to grow like nothing ever happened.

My current feed is 680ppm (in RO water). Runoff ppm is 350 on White Widow and 500 on NL5xHaze. Am I feeding them too low? Especially White Widow? She does have a tendency to show deficiencies. Any hints for me?

My high humidity still worries me a bit but I have read a lot on VPD and I am a little more relaxed now - it seems I am in the right range of temp/RH as far as VPD is concerned. What worries me now is that every day I find few leaves which sweat some water, even though I have a lot of air movement (4 fans all the time). This happens primarily on leaves touching each other - my solution - defoliate Yes, whenever I see that situation, the leaf with water gets trimmed.

As a closing pic, here is a view of my grow entire tent:

 

[Pennywise]

Sweet setup, nice flat canopy!

 

[tom420]

Thanks PW, trying my best

Learning also from your monster journals. But 300 pages? No time to read it all, no way, so i'm jumping from place to place randomly looking for nuggets of knowledge

Btw, reading through such long threads on 420mag it a huge pain for me. I'm connecting via TOR - growing is not all that legal here so I don't want to raise any red flags with my ISP. But until few weeks ago all was fine, however recently I cannot connect (well, perhaps once in few days it would connect for a while). So I'm going TOR -> Web Proxy and then it kinda works but sooooooo slow! And I have to try 5 - 6 proxies before I stumble upon one that would allow picture upload. Man, it's such a pain.

 

[tom420]

How y'all growing?

High time to update this journal before some mysterious 420 bot moves it to Abandoned!

Girls are now at 59 days from seed, 16 days from flipping to 12/12.
Since switching to flowering light schedule not much has been happening.
No pests, no deficiencies, no burns - so far so good. I hope it stays that way.

Girls are stretching nicely, growing perhaps 1,5 - 2,5 cm each day. They are now 16 days in flower and reaching 22cm above the scrog net. Well, there are some higher tops as well, and the record breaking one is 33cm - I will try to bring it down a bit with some cable ties. But I still have some room to move my lights up so I'm not in a panic mode yet. And with defoliation I think they will stop the stretch soon .... or not Time will tell.

My DIY top drip watering system works quite OK. It's not perfect but decent enough for me. For example, when I let the reservoir get too empty, even though feeding pump is fully covered by water it sometimes has a problem to start watering. I need to disconnect the hose from the pump, the pump will happily start pumping water into the air (in the res, not on my walls) and then I can connect the hose and water flows to my plants. Oh well, I just need to remember not to let it be at that low level when I leave it unattended for a day or two.

Second thing with this whole automated watering is a thin brownish slimy film that would cover the bottom of the reservoir after 3 days. I have installed a second mixing pump and both of them are on 24/7 (they are really small, like not even two feet raise). It helps a bit but that slimy film still accumulates. So I try to clean the res every three to four days. I don't mind - it's 10 minutes. And with my two plant "operation" I usually have empty tank in the evening. So I wash it and mix fresh nutes for next day.

But then I guess all this constant mixing raises the PH quite quickly. So I check it few times a day, half an hour before the watering and adjust it if too high (anything above 5.9 I would bring down to 5.8). But I don't sweat it if I cannot adjust it because I'm not there.

Also, when I open the res to refill or check PH there is this smell - not a foul smell but ... hmm ... it smells like corn. Perhaps in the enclosed res with all the mixing going on it has to be like that. I don't know. Well, given that Rhizotonic smells like dead fish all this corn smell is not that bad after all.

I have started adding H&G Drip Clean to keep my DIY drip lines clean I read that you should use Drip Clean from the very beginning or otherwise it will kill your plants if you start mid grow. So I started with half dose - 0,25 ml/liter. Btw, I'm not going to convert all metric measurements to gallons, inches, Fahrenheits and what have you anymore. I'm guessing nobody is reading this journal so for my future reference metric will do just fine

So .. what else ... ah ... defoliating!
I'm thorn between "fan leaves are plant's energy and food supply" and "cut them all off and let the light reach the buds" standpoints. I am however leaning towards the latter. So I'm not cutting all the fans, but try to cut those blocking the light on its way to the developing buds. My girls are used to defoliating from their early days so I hope they won't mind if I continue. Actually, no matter how many leaves I remove they seem to bounce back in no time and I'm asking myself if I have really defoliated two days before or perhaps it's Alzheimer's kicking in. So yeah, I have defoliated today and I post the latest pics below.

Now I'm wondering when to start feeding them PK13/14. I did a lot of reading and I am considering three possibilities:
1 - Give PK13/14 for one week - 4th week of flower for WW and 5th week for NL5xHaze
2 - Start PK13/14 some three days after stretch is over and continue for two weeks
3 - Give PK13/14 to both of them during weeks 5 and 6
Option 3 would be the easiest as I have one feeding reservoir. If I go with option 1 or 2 I would have to feed them separately (perhaps not with 2). I have 250ml of PK13/14. At 5ml/gal (recommended is 6) that bottle would last me ca. 17 days so perhaps I will just give it until I use the whole bottle - 2,5 weeks.

And now the latest pics, after deleafing earlier today.

Top view:

They don't look so big from the side:

White Widow side of scrog:

Northern Lights #5 x Haze side of scrog:

White Widow bud developing:

Northern Lights #5 x Haze bud developing:

 

[Rang3rDang3r]

Hey Tom ...nice setup !!!was gonna scrog this run too but decided to get a few grows done and then experiment after Hahaha... bit you ladies are beautiful !!!

 

[tom420]

Thanks Rang3rDang3r!
Yes, I noticed your plans to scrog ha ha Well, there is always the next grow.
For my first grow I didn't want to complicate things at all - I grew an auto But I knew already then that my photo period grow will be a scrog. It just seems to me an easy, risk-free way to train the plants to even canopy. I trained that auto without scrog and I split the main stem when bending branches! Luckily, it turned out I experienced more stress from this event than my plant which healed in no time and didn't even slow its growth for a day

 

[Pennywise]

Try Z7 or Hydroguard in your Rez, that brown slime will come back and bite your butt.

 

[ChubStudly]

Hey Tom - great looking girls you have there!! Keep giving them the love.

 

[tom420]

Hey PW, thanks for the heads up on that slime biting my butt! Didn't know it could be dangerous after all. Also, I was hoping Drip Clean would help with the slime, but obviously it doesn't.
So now I just need to locate a hydroshop that would have Z7 or Hydroguard. And from my quick initial search I see it won't be easy

 

[tom420]

Thanks ChubStudly! I'm a proud dad for sure. They get "Whole Lotta Love" 24/7! Well, more like 12/12 - wouldn't want to disturb them when they sleep ha ha

 

[tom420]

A quick update on latest developments.

My girls are 71 days old from germination and 28 days in flower - 4 weeks exactly.
Flowering continues without issues so far.
White Widow is slowing her stretch - currently growing only 0,5cm a day - but growing nonetheless.
Northern Lights #5 x Haze doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Good thing is that she is not stretching at some crazy speed like 2 inches/day. She is keeping her constant pace of 1,5cm a day. I still have room to move my lights up. For sure it was a wise decision to top and scrog her, otherwise she would be already into the LEDs for sure.

Some 10 days ago I have switched to watering 6 times a day. Five times with just a little runoff and the last watering of the day with more runoff to have at least 30% of daily feed.

My runoff PPMs have been rising slowly. I guess that's from the multiple feedings. I was feeding at 625 ppm and WW runoff went up to 740, which would not be so bad, but NL5xH went to 920 which is 300pps above feeding. I run a lot of water through them few days ago at 500ppm to bring my runoff down a bit. And since then I am feeding at 500ppm and my runoff is now around 500ppm for WW and 600 for NL5xH.

Runoff PH is still quite high - 6.2 for WW and 6.5 for NL5xH but since plants look OK I am not compensating for it when feeding. I set my feeding at ca 5.8-5.9 in the morning and it swings up to 6.1-6.2 during the day. Well, I guess 6.2 PH of the runoff is not strange if 6.2 is coming in ha ha .. OK

I'm giving Drip Clean at full strength (1ml/10L) since few days and don't see any bad signs, so hopefully those rumors about killing plants if you start with Drip Clean mid grow were just that - rumors.

Starting tomorrow I will include PK13/14 in the feed. At 1/3 strength. This will add 75ppm to my feed. I am lowering Ca and Mg just a bit to land at around 560ppm total and I will be watching runoff closely, as always. Next week I will go to 2/3 strength and continue until my 250ml bottle is empty. That should be about 3 weeks.

Unfortunately, no luck finding either Hydroguard or Z7 as advised by Pennywise. So for the time being I am resorting to cleaning the reservoir and mixing fresh nutes every day. I would only leave it for longer if I was not at home for more than a day and fortunately I have no such plans until year end.

I have cleaned NL5xH today removing all the growth from under the scrog net. I need to do the same to WW but it was so much work I didn't finish before lights off. WW will get her cleanup tomorrow.

I am now hesitant to remove any more fan leaves as they have started to get some sugar coating! I see more and more frost every day! And I don't have to tell you - I like it a lot! Looks like the trim might be super potent from these girls. If all goes to plan I will be making some canna butter and some extra strong brownies!

Few pictures to wrap this post up:

NL5xHaze flower:

White Widow flower:

White Widow on the right slowing her stretch, NL5xH continues:

The "big picture"