1st Hydro - NFT Rock Star Kush 600w LED

[woolybear]

Hello ICMAG

This diary is to document my 2015 rock star kush grow. Medman's RSK has a coffee smell and nice bag appeal. I still have some nugs that I should take pictures of.

"Mini medman table"

Ingredients:

- two 300w LED panels
- jack's hydro 90-420 ppm
- 10 gal rubbermaid tote
- reflective foamcore (home depot)
- plastic painter's tub

I'll start with a picture of the star:

Here's what she looked like a month ago:

Here's the grow tub:

Which is a painter's tub i think. The top is made of reflective foam sheeting, which was around $3 for a big sheet. This is the basic technique:

Being that this my first hydro grow, I had to screw something up. And that something was overwatering and feeding at night - which cost me 2 weeks of veg time but the plant is fine now.

The roots have colonized the entire tub:

I vegged this plant mostly under LED, which I will not do next time as it made the plant a bit too tightly stacked.

Keywords: hydro medman LST scrog NFT LED tent

 

[woolybear]

Here's a picture of the rock star kush I ran last year:

A very pretty plant, strong stone, chunky nugs. This plant does not need a lot of nutes, 175 ppm is fine. Medman recommends keeping the nutes low as it helps prevent fungal annoyances and hermi issues.

This plant is highly trained. All the branches have been tied down. Here's one I tied down the other day, you can see the leaves reorientate themselves:

Here's older branch with excellent growth on the shoots there. I may top these 3 guys for clones:

Side shot:

You may notice that the plant is on the left side of the tub, instead of the middle. This is because I had cut two smaller holes in the right side to run a couple of other plants.

One of them died due to the overwatering, the other's was not doing do hot, growing yes, but the root growth was stunted.

I moved that plant to a difference pot and it recovered! I'm pretty sure that because the rock star kush's roots colonized the tub, there was a plant vs plant biological root war and the rsk wasn't giving up it's turf.

Interesting, eh?

 

[Kiloz]

Looking good man, going to be interesting

 

[PetFlora]

WTF?

175ppm and you have those nuggz?

You sure your meter is calibrated?

I thought I was stingy with nutes: mostly ~ 600 after flip, pushing to ~ 800 once buds set, ~ 1000 after stretch for ~ 2 weeks, then back down

FYI the tub is a mortar/cement mixing tub, available at Lowes/HD

Good to have one under the rez as well, as precaution to spillage

The insulating foam insert is brilliant. Keeps heat out, though not much of an issue with LEDs.

 

[woolybear]

175 is what I'm vegging the plant currently; last run in coco I used higher levels.

Quick canopy update. I applied a foliar spray of the og biowar foliar fungus stuff. I've had the foliar for a couple of years, not sure if they are still alive, but the plant is doing well:

Before, 5 days:

I'll need to do a bit of pruning and more LST, then flipping should be in order soon.

edit: I pooped some more beans. Got 3 med man headbands that popped already plus 2 D4SD freebies.

I also ordered a powerhead and will put that in the res for poops and giggles. Saw it in crooked8's threads and thought it was a cool idea.

 

[Meison]

looking good, I have to agree 175ppm is something low, maybe from R/O it works out. I get 140ppm from tap water, adding A/B for veg leaves it at 350 to start clones, so around 180ppm added from nuts, maybe it just looks low but it isn't as there are no extras in the water?

 

[woolybear]

Flowering time

Flowering time

Flipped the tent, tied down the remaining stray shoot.

Yesterday I added bloom booster to 240ppm; today it was at 223, so she ate 17ppm in one day.

Added water and h2o2 to bring the ppms to 205. After tomorrow I'll empty the rez and apply fresh nutes.

foliage:

 

[woolybear]

text update today.

I'm following med man's feeding schedule - 25/50/100%. He recommends 0.5 - 0.8 ec for this plant, which is 350-560 ppm.

Two days each:

25% 90-140ppm
50% 176-280ppm
100% 350-560ppm
- bloom booster -
Dump rez, make new solution.

I'm erring on the lower side of the nute range for now. Starting at 77ppm, she ate 3ppm of nutes. I bumped it up to 140ppm and after 24 hours she ate 30ppm.

Not sure how I'm going to handle the bloom booster. I'll have to see how mush she eats.

Added fresh water and raised the nutes to 185ppm.

 

[woolybear]

After 24 hours my plants ate the same amount as yesterday, 30ppm.

How crazy is that?

That is a cool part of hydro, you have access to this data about your grow.

Topped off the res so the nutes are quite low. Added squirt of h2o2. I think i see a teeny tiny bit of possible nute burn on some of the leaf tips, thought that may be an optical illusion.

Did a bit more trimming, clearing bud sites. I wonder what my yield will be!

edit: tomorrow i'll bump the nutes to 50% strength. it will be interesting what the plant's reaction will be.

 

[woolybear]

day 11

day 11

Day 11 Flowering update!

Plant is now eating 50ppms a day. Bud set has happened, and the plant is growing nuts. Very little stretch, maybe an inch or so.

Foliage with newly formed buds:

more of a side view:

 

[Nish]

Looking good m8, hav u got a link for the led lights?

That root matt looks epic btw.

 

[woolybear]

Week 4 Day 26 update

Week 4 Day 26 update

@Nish not sure if the company is around anymore - growledhydro.com. I bought the lights in this tent from the same guy but off of ebay. I've had these lights for at least 3 years.

Day 26. Not much too report, things are going smoothly.

I notice the plant has a more pronounced berry smell this time around.

This is the nicest weed plant I've grown so far. Bud:

Canopy:

I have a feeling I'll be getting a lot of bud off this plant. Just in time as well, both my rock star kush and silver rock skunk jars are empty!!!

 

[woolybear]

Note that I paid around 350 USD for each 300w panel.

I'm shooting for 2 ounces, which would be .09 grams a watt, which is pretty shitty result by any measure. So I hope I get more!

I plan on using the nice top buds for flower and turning the rest into hash. I'm leaning towards 190 proof hash as I really like the result from my last Everclear run.

I'd need to invest in a mini washing machine to really reap the benefits of water hash.

 

[Tonatiuh]

lookin good man,them led's are coming a long way in a hurry...
may be something I play w in the near future.
nice grow,beautiful plant.
peace-T-

 

[Solum]

looking good i can almost smell them

 

[bonbon]

just subscribed as i will be using your project as a template since i will be doing an RSK grow myself in a couple of months.
your minimalist ppm's have shown that this strain thrives on low dose nutes.
just wondering where you keep your ph at?
i use the lucas formula myself with an enhanced spectrum hortilux HPS bulb @about 50wt's psf.
for this grow i will still go with the LF regimen @50% to see if i can achieve similar results in a rockwool/hydroton medium E/F system.

very nice grow.

 

[woolybear]

Thanks all for watching and commenting!

Took the plant out for a final round of pruning.

I remove any leaf that is directly covering a bud. with the amount of training I'm doing, removing extra leaves is a must.

So I place the plant on the floor or below me, and look at how the light would go. this is especially relevant as I'm running LEDs and supposedly the penetration is not as good as whatever.

My goal is to get 50% buds for headstash 50% buds/popcorn for hash

 

[woolybear]

just subscribed as i will be using your project as a template since i will be doing an RSK grow myself in a couple of months.
your minimalist ppm's have shown that this strain thrives on low dose nutes.
just wondering where you keep your ph at?
very nice grow.

Thanks bonbon!

The jack's hydro keeps the ph at a rock-solid 7.0. My water is low ppm naturally.

TEXT UPDATE DAY 29 (WEEK 4)

The plant is drinking more than it is eating right now. I added bloom booster to get the ppms to 458, next day the water level dropped significantly and the ppms rose 20 points.

Orange hairs are growing in the buds, no nute burn on buds but some of the larger fans have TINY tip of burn.

Lots of sugar. Stretch has stopped. As this is a 52-day strain, I have about 3 weeks left. I think I'll do a ten day flush instead of two weeks as the plant has such a short flower time.

So I'll just top off the res and start plain h20 on 4/23.

 

[woolybear]

Tomorrow, 4/20 will be day 42 of the two and mark the beginning on the 14-day flush period.

For the last week I'll be trying the med-man method of shock flowering – "shocking flowering is my GST that increases yield, aroma,taste and quality, for virtually nothing."

"Most optimal conditions - for the last 3-7 days, give plants total darkness, and non-stop ice water with a water chiller, as cold as possible"

I'm getting setup by freezing a bunch of plastic water bottles. It'll be a bit of a pain, we'll see.

befor that i'll do:

Med-man method step and the law of 4 step 10 – defoliage shock – once plants have 14-10 days left to harvest, remove the bottom 2/3 of all the leafs. And all yellowing and dieing leafs as well in the upper canopy. This opens up more air flow and light to the ripening buds at the bottom of the canopy. The shock from this will increase resin production and aroma. As well as make trimming easier in the weeks to come. Bud rot prevention and increase in yield, quality and aroma. Make sure to not remove the top leafs still green and healthy. It will hinder your yield and quality.

 

[PetFlora]

Tomorrow, 4/20 will be day 42 of the two and mark the beginning on the 14-day flush period.

For the last week I'll be trying the med-man method of shock flowering – "shocking flowering is my GST that increases yield, aroma,taste and quality, for virtually nothing."

"Most optimal conditions - for the last 3-7 days, give plants total darkness, and non-stop ice water with a water chiller, as cold as possible"

I'm getting setup by freezing a bunch of plastic water bottles. It'll be a bit of a pain, we'll see.

befor that i'll do:

Med-man method step and the law of 4 step 10 – defoliage shock – once plants have 14-10 days left to harvest, remove the bottom 2/3 of all the leafs. And all yellowing and dieing leafs as well in the upper canopy. This opens up more air flow and light to the ripening buds at the bottom of the canopy. The shock from this will increase resin production and aroma. As well as make trimming easier in the weeks to come. Bud rot prevention and increase in yield, quality and aroma. Make sure to not remove the top leafs still green and healthy. It will hinder your yield and quality.

I tried frozen bottles of water but they all split, adding more water to the flush.

Not a big deal, just make sure the rez is inside a bigger container to catch any over flow