My new cab - Female seed NL

[slowandeasy]

Just wanted to let you know that you are not the only one with the delay in flowering. Have almost the exact same situation with the same exact seeds! Been 3 weeks now and 2 of 3 are showing hairs, one still is not. They are stretching alot more than estimated. Cool temps in the cab and rez is to blame for slow bud growth, but it looks like yours are taking off now. Will be watching because your week or two ahead. Good luck, they look nice!

 

[I2KanGrow]

Just wanted to let you know that you are not the only one with the delay in flowering. Have almost the exact same situation with the same exact seeds! Been 3 weeks now and 2 of 3 are showing hairs, one still is not. They are stretching alot more than estimated. Cool temps in the cab and rez is to blame for slow bud growth, but it looks like yours are taking off now. Will be watching because your week or two ahead. Good luck, they look nice!

Hey S&E, come-on-in, have a seat, and enjoy the show (I mean grow). I pulled a whole bunch of leaves out of my cab yesterday, & I think it may have helped to grow the buds a bit - I see significant growth in just the past 24 hours.

I've been able to raise my cab temps to around 69-degrees F, by pulling the cooltube and almost stalling my vent shaded-pole fan, temps drop to around 64-deg. F at "night", so temps are far from ideal. I'll post pictures tomorrow - thanks for stoppin' by.

 

[guest 77721]

Brrr... that's were that cold draft is coming from.

Have you thought of putting an aquarium heater in the rez to keep the temps up?

 

[I2KanGrow]

Have you thought of putting an aquarium heater in the rez to keep the temps up?

Oddly-enough Red, the rez temps are what I believe to be ideal, around 20C (68F), steady as a rock - so I think I'll just leave it alone. I'm reading temps under the canopy at around 69F, I don't have any room to place the sensor on the screen, but I'm sure that it's in the low-to-mid 70s.

No pics today, but I wanted to report that my girls are starting to bulk-up, and frost. Things are starting to happen! I'll try to grab a pic or 2 tomorrow.

I Need Guidance!!
My ppms remain @ around 1520, and pH @ around 5.5 (where they've been throughout this grow). I read somewhere that mid-bloom wants a slightly sweeter water, so I'm going to try to bump my rez-water to 5.8-or-so, by adding a gallon of pH-7, without ferts - which should bring down the ppms a bit also.

I'm thinking that it'd be wise to bring the ppms down, because the strongest fert-water I've made is around 1200ppm, & I'm reading over 1500ppm, which I believe means that my girls are rejecting the ferts - it's too strong.

Am I right in my assumptions? any insight would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.

 

[guest 77721]

I'm thinking your pH at 5.5 is almost out of range. In flowering there is heavy P and Mg takeup so you don't want to be below 5.8. Maybe that's what's happening is the P and Mg aren't being taken up and that's what's building up.

Your plants are growing slowly so they aren't going to show def's as quickly. Is 1200 a good target or should you be dropping down to 1000?

 

[luv2garden]

you should dilute the water to bring it back down and keep the PH 5.8-6.2 and drop it again to 5.8 and the nutes I would bring down to 1000 ppm like Red said and see if the nute level drops when you measure in a few days if so just mix the same level and top off. That's how I feed my veggies and they are monsters in my Large Homebox Tent
. My buds are in organics this round.

 

[I2KanGrow]

I see both your points - here's how I plan to correct:

I decided on just changing-out the water, because when I got my pencil/paper out and started crunching numbers, I came to realize that I'd need to swap-out 3 out of 5 gallons, just to bring the ppms down to where they need to be, and even after correcting this way, since I've been in what may have been a nute-lockout situation, I couldn't be sure that the balance of nutes would then be proper. My girls really look great - I'd hate to burn them up with unbalanced nutes, ya know?

It's a breeze to drain my rez, then refill with fresh, pH/nute-balanced water, with my set-up anyways - so what-the-heck, ya know?

With regard to nute strength - I think I'll split the difference between your suggested 1000ppm, and my planned 1200ppm. I'm in week 4 of flower, which according to much I've read (including Red's spreadsheets - very nice Red, BTW!) - I should be in the 1200ppm range for medium-light feeding. Now, I realize that because of low temps - my grow is "riding the short bus" (that is, slightly retarded), so that dropping down to 1100ppms seems to be prudent.

Does this make sense, or am I going to be making a big mistake here??

Oh - I plan on having pH in the 5.75-6.0 range (the test strips I use are incremented in 0.25 steps)

 

[I2KanGrow]

Hi Again:

Well, I swapped-out my water to 1100ppm, pH @ around 5.9-6.0. All went smoothly - here's some root & bud-porn, taken while doing the swap:

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Interesting sidenote - Green Smoke brought this possible issue up a few posts back - I discovered that I couldn't separate the cover from the rez, because the roots had worked their way around my airstones. Instead of un-clipping the airstones and de-tangling the roots (possibly shocking my girls in the process), I opted to just rinse & refill - not really a problem, just an observation.

Hey Luv2 - are those huge leaves & violet flowers in the left-side picture, that you attached to your post eggplants? Great looking veggies - Dude!! I'm amazed that you could grow them inside!

 

[winkdogg]

hey man awesome cab great work!!

 

[Green Smoke]

Interesting sidenote - Green Smoke brought this possible issue up a few posts back - I discovered that I couldn't separate the cover from the rez, because the roots had worked their way around my airstones. Instead of un-clipping the airstones and de-tangling the roots (possibly shocking my girls in the process), I opted to just rinse & refill - not really a problem, just an observation.

NGB made mention of some sort of net he used to keep roots off the air stones. He also said that he actualy trimmed the roots at 6 - 8 weeks, somrthing I would be scared to death to do. Without it, imagine what your root mass will be at say 10 weeks. Your rez may only have room for a couple gallons by then. Things look awefully healthy right now though, sorry for any doom and gloom.

 

[guest 77721]

Looking good. Those roots are to die for...

I didn't know you'd be getting some help off my spreadsheets for the AN. I thought you were following the Lucas formula?

 

[I2KanGrow]

hey man awesome cab great work!!

Thankya, Wink, and thanks for droppin' by!

NGB made mention of some sort of net he used to keep roots off the air stones. He also said that he actualy trimmed the roots at 6 - 8 weeks, somrthing I would be scared to death to do. Without it, imagine what your root mass will be at say 10 weeks. Your rez may only have room for a couple gallons by then. Things look awefully healthy right now though, sorry for any doom and gloom.

Yeah, I don't see myself giving the roots a trim, I'm feeling confident that the roots won't choke themselves, and that they won't be able to prevent the airstones from doing the job either. Having some sort of net wouldn't prevent the roots from growing either.

When you get right down to it, my girls really have a ton of space for their roots - much more then if they were in an 8" pot... So, in the immortal words of Alfred E. Newman......

"What, Me Worry?"

Looking good. Those roots are to die for...

I didn't know you'd be getting some help off my spreadsheets for the AN. I thought you were following the Lucas formula?

Thanks for the props - they really are thick under there! I'm using the I.D.K.W.T.F.I.D. method, it's all about putting blind faith in the bloom nutes, and hoping that the chemists @ Dyna-Grow DO know what the F**K they're doing!! So far, the method has been working without a hitch!

Time will tell!

 

[Green Smoke]

"What, Me Worry?"

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! Grow with confidence bro. Your grow is going to put that root question to rest. Most NGB'ers eventualy went to soil. I wanna see a true NGB SWC work for someone else.

You grow boy .....

 

[slowandeasy]

How long did yours stretch 4? They are 28 days into flower and still stretching! Thought they would be done stretching by now!!

 

[guest 77721]

Ooohh some of those girls are showing pink and purple. Sweet.

Looks to me like you caught the PPM swing just right without any tip burn.

Any thoughts to trimming down the jungle to get your primary buds separated from the excess leaves and secondary budlings?

 

[#1cheesebuds]

holy shit that looks so great.

 

[I2KanGrow]

Ooohh some of those girls are showing pink and purple. Sweet.

Looks to me like you caught the PPM swing just right without any tip burn.

Any thoughts to trimming down the jungle to get your primary buds separated from the excess leaves and secondary budlings?

Thanks - I shot those images with my daughters P&S camera, the buds have a very slight purple hue to them, but not as much as those images imply.

I took out quite a bit of trim the other night - but it's looking like a jungle again. You really have to keep after them with this set-up!

holy shit that looks so great.

Thankya, Cheese - I'm enjoying (OK - lurking!) your grow thread, also - keep it up!

Here's 2 bud-porn-shots, how the girls look today:

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I'm gonna name this bud Icarus - it got too close to the lamp and burned it's leaf. Guess I should think about re-insalling the cooltube?

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Getting full of hairs and trichs.

That's all for now!

 

[guest 77721]

Nice. Looks like the've settled down into bloom production now. I gotta get a better camera too. I could get a better one from a box of cereal now!

 

[I2KanGrow]

Hi Everyone:

Well, my business trip that was supposed to only be 8 days long turned-out to be 10 days long - but my girls seem to take the neglect in-stride (I'm grateful that I have job, and needed to take the trip!). Here's what I came home to;

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I certainly have a jungle, which I began to thin after taking these pics. The 2 things I was most worried about was my rez-rez pump thingie, and having the buds run into the lamp and burning-up, without the benefit being smoked. Turns-out, neither was an issue - the rez-rez pump worked like a charm, and it seems that the girls didn't stretch much at all - they just got fatter, which is a good thing.

Over the time I was away, my ppms are up more then expected (about 1440 ppm, 300 ppm more then I was expecting) and pH is WAY down, to around 5, so I'm starting to raise that up to where it needs to be. The girls aren't suffering (just a tad bit of tip burning, which you can see in the 2nd pic), so I'll bring pH up/ppms down over the next couple of days.

My mom fared alright also, I really watered her up before leaving, and she had just enough to make it thru my absence. She's a bonsai in dire need of maintenance - very root-bound, so I think a re-pot be on my plate this week.

So, while one can leave the girls alone in a 5-gallon microgrow (with 7 gallons in reserve) for close to 2 weeks, I certainly don't recommend it. I think I may have gotten lucky to have my girls come out of it in pretty good shape!

 

[guest 77721]

Wow the girls look great. You should go away more often. LOL
Your hard work has really paid off with the rez pump and plumbing.

Are you gonna give the girls a haircut? Looks like a jungle in there.

I'm doing really well now. The LUI and Shiska are in full flowering now and a little LUI and Thai Light just started. I'm gonna have some pollen very soon too.