Rockwool Trees

[Dynamite]

dyno - props brother! feel free to hijack anytime! ive yet to reach 2liter status, i mostly just have a bunch of smaller colas (coke can-1liter)..when i was running 4 per light and not shaping plants as bushes, my colas were much bigger than they are now, but my over all yield was less...now i get a better yield over all but with smaller colas..think it has to do with me spreading the energy of the plant to 100 tops vs 5-10...you ever have any issues with the chem4 getting budrot on them 2 liter colas? last run i had a cola here or there with a tiny bit of rot..not alot and it was most likely from not enough circulation in the room...but when she throws those big dense colas, in a dense canopy, i get paranoid..actually taking her out of rotation for this exact reason...have friends from back home that grow huge colas and they get popsicle sticks to spread and hold apart bud sites on very large main colas , to allow them to breath..considered doing that but id rather just run something else

Trophy buds don't come from doing 1 plant per light , your correct on that .. and massive amounts of medium cola's do equal more weight then a few big'uns for sure .. my smaller plants get the bigger cola's .. I'm basically repeating what you just said ..lol

chem#4 doesn't usually rot , when it has happened it's a small leaf that yellowed from flushing and rolled up inside the cola causing it .. the calyx's themselves are very rot resistant on that cut , some others I have like the Whitelightning don't fair so well , you look at her wrong and have a couple oz's of rotten bud , then those spores will travel thru the room and cause other strains cola's to rot that normally would not ..

far as rot prevention - good air flow , and watching the humidity not going over 60% .. I'm a believer that higher humidity helps for happy healthier plants , but those last couple week in 12/12 I'll turn my ac down during lights on for it's dehuey action and use a dehuey at night .. where I'm at now is considered "high desert' , so taking away humidity is not a problem here , adding it is ..

chem#4 will always be a keeper for me , just a GREAT cropper and let go 70days+ is epic smoke .. hard to beat that . I don't run entire grows of any one thing , normally 4-9 strains and 12-24 plants ..

looking forward to seeing your veg techniques ! I don't really have one method dialed for veg , I'm kinda all over the place with it trying to accommodate for different strains needs ,and mostly not having a proper veg area and constantly over growing my veg area ..I'm building a dedicated veg area now

great thread here !! I know it takes time and dedication

spread the knowledge bro !!

 

[Desert Hydro]

hey djm, i see that you use the umbrella style reflector. is there any difference between the vertical bulb position and the horizontal one? i was gonna order a couple 1k's but wanted to check first. if the tent gets too hot i will air cool but i have a plan. run burner outside of the tent and suck tons of air through the tent. i have an 8" inline, 6" can fan max and a 6" inline. i can also plumb the ac directly into the tent as well. one way or another i am getting those 1k's in there lol. the tent is ~10x10 and and its in a room thats 20x30. im gonna run 2 1k's on one side and 3 6's in vert scrog donuts on the other side. also gonna order a light mover and convert it to a vertical light mover and make those bulbs dance!

 

[Desert Hydro]

bump! my blue dream are about a week into veg with co2 and they are bushing out good with all the super cropping. should i pinch the lower shoots as well or only the main growth tips?

there are 4 BD and one NYCD. all getting about 50 day veg and then under the 1k's. this is my first ever grow with 1ks. what is optimal distance bare/with reflector just in case i have to air cool.

my big yielding AK and tsi fly are still in vegling stage but they are coming along nicely so far.

 

[Grow4Flow]

looking awesome DH!

 

[Capulator]

PH and PPMS / DTW vs Recirc and Monitoring runoff/ Counteracting saltbuild up in bulk wool
___________________________________________________

when running bulk wool dtw with salt nutes, salt build up has to be taken into consideration..as does the ph of the medium and run off..rockwool is spun limestone made in the same way that they spin cotton candy..this gives the rockwool a high ph which will always raise the ph of ingoing water..the bulk rockwool, being unrefined, has more lime desposits in it and there for pulls the ph of ingoing water higher than standard rockwool would..due to this one has to put your nutrient solution in a ph range to where as it passes through the rockwool its never allowed to rise above a certain ph...example, if you were to feed this wool with say a ph of 5.5 your runoff after 24 hours would be roughly 6.2 or so..water source dependent and being in hydro one wouldnt want the ph to go beyond 6.0 as you will begin to birth a phos. deficiency..so what i do is ph my nutrient solution down to a ph of 5.3 and after 24 hours, after passing through the rockwool, the runoff will rise upto 6.0 and go no higher..this gives me full nutrient availability of all elements every 24 hours using a ph swing of 5.3-6.0..and ive found that in hydro, using a ph swing to cover a wide range of elements is much more effective than locking it down to any one ph like 5.5 or 5.8

if running this wool dtw, its best to monitor the ph and ppm levels of your run off and tweek the next days waterings according to the previous days readinds..doing this will assure that the medium is stable in ph and ppm levels...if your ph is over 6.0, lower the next feed .1 for every .1 the run off is over

if running dtw , one must also either allow a lot of run off each watering or alternate with plain waterings..the best way is alternating plain waterings..even with 10% run off salt build up after 5 days/5 feeds will ussually be 300-400 ppms higher than ingoing water has ever been...example..if i fed for 4 days and every day i fed at 700ppms. the runoff on day 5 would be past 1000ppms, even if ive never fed past 700..i found that depeding on how salty your nutes are, giving the plants a plain watering every 4th or 5th feeding will counter act this salt build up and keep the medium in the range of 700-900ppms , when feeding at 700

DJM,

This is a great thread. Dynomite had me wanting to do flock for quite sometime. If it's o.k. with you I wanted to touch on something that you said here about high pH causing lockout.

http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/nutrientavailability.htm

Here we can see the nutrient availability chart for soil less culture. 6.2 pH will not quite lock out P yet, but will make it less available. Lockout can also be caused by an imbalance between several of the major and minor elements. I think this is more important to look at when talking about lockout. It's not the food you give but the ratios in which you give it.

http://www.apal.com.au/site/Default.../APAL PLANT NUTRIENT INTERACTIONS July 08.pdf

I also found this on rockwool:

http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemistry/Rockwool

and this excerpt from the same site:

Rockwool exhibits a behavior called 'conditioning' in which it gradually absorbs phosphorus. New rockwool usually has a pH around 7.4 - 7.6. The absorbed phosphorus is available to plants, but is removed from the nutrient solution. Over time as the phosphorus builds up, the rockwool becomes 'conditioned' and absorbs progressively smaller quantities of phosphorus until it becomes saturated. This process is beneficial to flowering plants because the rockwool serves as a storage for the large quantities of phosphorus needed during flowering. Providing large amounts in the nutrient solution could cause nutrient burn and excessively low pH, which in turn would lock out other nutrients.


So saturating the rockwool with high amounts of phosphoric acid from the get go will naturally allow the rockwool to absorb high amounts of P. I think it may not ever be P lockouts at 6.2. I think it may be something else.

Have you thought of mixing your own salts so you can feed less P through the grow?

Also, as far as pH swing goes in hydro... I do this as well, mostly out of laziness. After looking at the nutrient/pH chart this morning it seems it would be best to keep the pH at around 5.2-5.5 all the time, as past 5.5 approaching 6.0, you get less availability across the board.

From what I understand, in soil plants never are actually using more than 5ppm of P at any given time, as this is the CEC capacity of the soil solution. I find that feeding high P causes many problems, including the killing off of microbiology. I never feed a solution higher than 40ppm P for this reason.

High amounts of P locks out iron and Ca (Ca IMHO being one of the most essential and important elements)

DTW is very forgiving. You can feed high amounts of nutes as well as very low amounts of nutes with similar results. I am wondering if with the bulk rockwool soaked in P acid it would be better to water with a low ppm solution, high in Ca and lower in P to compensate and achieve the proper ratio in the media itself...


Anyway, thanks for the post. I am def. gonna throw a couple flock plants in a few months to see if I can shed more light on this via experience.

-Cap

 

[chileno1978]

Juan Matus, eres el puto amo!
Amazing post! thanks for sharing, you are really giving back!

 

[Desert Hydro]

looking awesome DH!

thanks. i made a few mistake on my first vert grow and im looking to improve upon my first attempt. i failed to trim out a bunch of lower shit that didnt get proper light and i think my rings were a bit too large for 600's. i shrank my rings by 6" and plan on trimming the shit out of the lower stuff on my vert scrogs.

now im gonna try out DJM's method on his smaller tree version and 1ks and see what i do better with GPW wise. from there i will decide which way to go from here on out

 

[Grow4Flow]

DH,
It's amazing how close you can get the bulb to your plants in vert. I used two Honeywell muffins from walmart my last run. The wind tunnels/shield the fans create around the bulb allowed me to put the plants only inches from it.

This next round, im going to give the DTW RW trees a go

 

[Desert Hydro]

root porn of some freshly transplanted c99 seeds. been in the flock for about a week

 

[brixx999]

DJM.... much respect sir. I was wondering if you ever got the tutorial (step-by-step), that you were working on edited to post here?... would absolutely love to have that. And if you ever tried the Flying Skulls Z7 product that your friend Dynamite suggested?

 

[drknockbootz]

would this type of rockwool work in beds? Im loving my coco but always looking for something new and different

 

[Desert Hydro]

does anyone know if bulk rockwool plays nice with organic hydro nutes? there seems to be a pretty big group around here that only want organic even though they cant even tell a damn difference lol. many people have sworn that a lot of my stuff is organic because its so smooth and tastes so good but i just dont over feed and i flush really well under optimal circumstances. im thinking about testing out a few trees with some organic nutes and see whats up.

 

[Clayton Bigsby]

ive been using PBP...great results.

 

[Desert Hydro]

thanks. ive used PBP before and liked it. i may give it a try on a few and see how it does.

 

[Desert Hydro]

figured i'd put an update up since i took a pic today. the plants i almost killed because i forgot to water are recovering quite nicely lol. my plan is to run the 3 blue dream cuts and then one big yielding tsi fly with 5 verrtical lights in my 9.5 x 9.5 tent. my BD have bushed up nicely. i am dialing the nutrients back a tad since i am getting claw at 2.0 ec. im down to 1.7 ec now and will stay the course and see what happens.

here is my intended layout for the tent. there will be a perimeter around the inside of the tent walls that will be unused so i may sneak a few more small guys in there if i they fit lol. what can i say? im gonna put all that light to use as best as possible.

600w---plant----600w

plant-----1k------plant

600w---plant----600w

 

[Skyrancher]

i have a step by step tutorial of this system written out including every aspect to get you from a rooted plug to a finished tree..once i get it edited i will add it here for anyone interested in going this route

DonJuanMatus...appreciate the time and energy you've put into detailing your grow and teaching your techiques. Very kind !!

Normally an outdoor grower, but my first indoor grow is planned on paper. After reading your thread through a couple times, I have changed my mind from soil to growing in rockwool, using the instructions shared here. You instructions are straight-forward enough for a first time indoor grower, thanks to your detailed posts. Thank you !!

I'm very interested in the step-by-step tutorial, when you have time to edit and post it.

Thanks to Desert Hydro for pointing our your thread.

Subscribed and taking a seat.

 

[Grow4Flow]

Looking forward to this tutorial

 

[Skyrancher]

5 gallon pots and a 6 week veg will do you well..when i ran 4 plants per light i did em in 5 gals of wool with a 6 week veg +/-...in that system good yielders like the cheese will pull 8-10 ounces per 5 gal, ok yielders like the white will do 6-7 ounces per 5 gal

Since my grow is in an attic with height restriction, 5 gallon pots seem like a good place to start. Do you remember how tall the high yield strains, with a 6 week veg, were in 5 gallon pots?

Any other details you can share for the smaller pot size is appreciated.

 

[Desert Hydro]

five days from the last pic above. they grow really fast in this stuff. i am gonna flower 8 in bulk wool in 3 gal air pots under 1k and then im building a ppk for 4 trees with 3400w. go big or go home

i think this method will stick with me for a while. i can do my medium size bumper crop in wool while i veg out 4 giants for a big vert grow.

one thing i would like to stress to newer growers is monocropping! i have multiple strains going(not my fault lol) and its a pain in the ass and its even worse with co2 by far! my blue dream are dark green on the verge of over fertilization so i tuned it down and now the rest are starving out lol. now im gonna have to run multiple reservoirs and break the strains into groups of heavy and light feeders. oh well. they are all OK right now but i would like them all at peak performance so that means more work

 

[chileno1978]

My 2 cents:
Usually, granulated rockwool (generally used for chimneys) is Chemically inert, cheaper than grodan and you can find it in any HDepot.