Novice grow, veteran mentored

[Snype]

Also since this is my first grow indoors I am still acquiring the right equipment and that will take a little while due to funds and such. I am also still building out my whole grow room. Currently I have an 8x8x7'tall room. I am building on to it an 8x8 office/kitchen where I will run my water and have a sink and counter and also a 4x8 veg room. My current lighting is the T5 I mentioned and a 600 watt Gavita HPS. I also have some various CFL standard base bulbs and fixtures. I am looking to add an additional 600 watt light possibly MH or maybe just another HPS and 2 light movers so as to cover the most of the 8x8 flower room I can achieve Im thinking 4x6 but I am not sure about that. The other idea I was toying with was to flower in the 8x4 room doing a vertical scrog with 2 lights on a yo-yo which would save me the cost of one light mover. The whole build is in a basement so temps have been no problem in fact I need to heat a little to keep the room warm enough so the res doesn't get too cold. I am legally allowed 10'x10' of canopy and the lower the plant count the better, in California the laws vary from county to county. So I really aim to maximize the yield per plant. This is a medical grow so I am going for the dankiest, stickiest I can grow. My excess I can sell to the dispensary and use the money to recoup expenses. Whatever method I can employ that makes the least amount of trimming at the harvest is also highly desireable, even if it means much more attention throughout the grow. Gosh I can't think of any other pertinent info at the moment but if/when I do I will be sure to keep you posted. Sorry for lack of good communication, I am always a little reluctant to say too much because I tend to overdo it some times. Also some of the problems I should have realized were problems and told you about them sooner but I am just a little slow to the punch sometimes. I think I got everything going good now though.

I know how it is trying to pay for all the things that you need to make a grow perfect. For what you said about a 10x10 grow space that would be really nice but it sounds like you don't have those options from what you are saying. Maybe you can knock down a wall or move the grow up stairs since you are legal. I'd be looking to build a 11' x 12' room and throw 4 x 1000 HPS in there with 2 of my 10 bucket systems. With the right strain you can easily pull a gram per watt with the right SCROG.

 

[Snype]

I just finished my 3rd dunk. I stayed up all night just to be able to observe the roots so I can dunk at the right time. My plants are my #1 priority in my life. I sacrifice myself for them at all times because without my plants, their would be no life. Fuck the wife. Sorry wife.

Dunk #1 was when I transplanted for the first time

Dunk #2 was 6 hours after dunk #1

Dunk #3 was 8 hours after dunk #2
Observations: Looking at the roots while I was dunking, you could see some roots grew about a half of an inch, maybe more. It's very obvious that after 6 hours it was still wet enough but at 8 hours it was slightly wet and almost too dry. 8 hours right now is the sweet spot.

I dunk these into a solution of:
3 Gallons Tap (140 PPM)
3 drops Clorox Bleach
12 mL GH FloraMicro
18 mL GH FloraBloom
pH down to 5.9

I dunk each plant into a 5 gallon bucket which contains 3 gallons of the solution above. In this 5 gallon bucket I have 2 air stones and an air pump that I turn on for the dunk. I dunk each plant into this bucket for 30 seconds. I will take pictures every day at 9PM which will make 24 hour intervals from the very beginning to show you what happens when you treat your plants as a priority and learn to make key observations to maximize your grows to the fullest extent.

 

[OldSchoolGreen]

I just finished my 3rd dunk. I stayed up all night just to be able to observe the roots so I can dunk at the right time. My plants are my #1 priority in my life. I sacrifice myself for them at all times because without my plants, their would be no life. Fuck the wife. Sorry wife.

Dunk #1 was when I transplanted for the first time

Dunk #2 was 6 hours after dunk #1

Dunk #3 was 8 hours after dunk #2
Observations: Looking at the roots while I was dunking, you could see some roots grew about a half of an inch, maybe more. It's very obvious that after 6 hours it was still wet enough but at 8 hours it was slightly wet and almost too dry. 8 hours right now is the sweet spot.

I dunk these into a solution of:
3 Gallons Tap (140 PPM)
3 drops Clorox Bleach
12 mL GH FloraMicro
18 mL GH FloraBloom
pH down to 5.9

I dunk each plant into a 5 gallon bucket which contains 3 gallons of the solution above. In this 5 gallon bucket I have 2 air stones and an air pump that I turn on for the dunk. I dunk each plant into this bucket for 30 seconds. I will take pictures every day at 9PM which will make 24 hour intervals from the very beginning to show you what happens when you treat your plants as a priority and learn to make key observations to maximize your grows to the fullest extent.

I'm learning a bunch from this thread, guys. Keep it up PLEASE!
-Old School

 

[Snype]

9 PM is here! The plants are being dunked at 8 hour intervals still. It has been exactly 24 hours since I placed the rooted cuttings into VEG-A. 8 hours is the sweet spot with my current conditions. Look at the picture that I just took:

Look how easily the roots grow with my methods. The roots have grown about an inch in the first 24 hours. I will continue to observe my roots and dunk when all the signs tell me to. In this specific picture, I had to depend on someone else who was supposed to dunk these plants at exactly 7 PM. That did not happen and it got done at 7:45 which was 45 minutes too long. This is why I feel the need to stay up at all hours of the night and day because this has to be taken seriously.

 

[sahdgrower]

Ok update... Since I got my top leveled out and adjusted the water perfect yesterday, I already see an improvement in root development the roots are starting to reach, also the plants are a little perkier, nothing you would tell in pictures but I spend a lot of time looking at them. I set the timer to flood for 15 minutes every 4 hours it takes about 7 minutes for the water level to reach the pots and a couple minutes to drain when the pump turns off. I also pulled the light up to 18" from the plants. I will laser focus on the roots for the next week and make sure to hand dunk as often as they tell me they want it. Also VX8 and VX9 are just about ready for me to fim, I will try to take these tops as cuttings, I will follow your cutting guide as closely as I can with the exception that the actual cutting will not have any nodes for me to remove as you demonstrated in the tutorial.

 

[tleaf jr.]

thank you guys both for this very imformative lesson...please proceed professor snype

 

[Hammerhead]

Nice Roots Snype ...

 

[sahdgrower]

Makes it seem so easy. I feel pretty lame for having as much trouble as I am.

 

[sahdgrower]

I am checking on these roots every hour or so, it seems like they are drying out before the pot is ready for more water. If I turn the pot to 45 degrees it will drip water. The new rootlets just seem to give up 1/4" into the air. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong. Some of the plants have some promising roots but the majority is a great big mass that just sits in the bottom of the pot like the pics I previously posted. I will add a couple from tonight in just a few minutes. I moved my computer down next to my grow room so I can be even more on top of things. Oh and one more thing. My ph increased by .2 overnight as well as my ppm increased by 20. I am noticing a vitaminy kinda smell from the res I didn't notice before or maybe it is just stronger.

 

[sahdgrower]

more roots pics

more roots pics

so here is a pic of the best roots vx5 (previously shown on root pic as well)


and here are a few others not doing quite as well.

 

[Snype]

That's why you have to keep up with these plants. Once some of them start to go down hill you will be playing catch up and trying to bring some of them back to health. The fact that you are smelling something funny is also not a good thing. You may have already caught pythium with the stress that you added. You can see how a lot of your roots have problems on some other plants. If I was in your position I'd not be happy. It's hard to tell you want to do next because things don't look good for all the time you have been taking. We might be going on weeks now and we should be on a few days from how the roots look. You are going to have to figure out when you are supposed to be flooding those. You can tell you waited too long on some of them. For me to give you a schedule of what I would do as of now would be very hard cause I'd really have to see the roots of all the plants every couple of hours to make decisions. You must know the idea of what we are trying to do by now. Every type of pot is going to change the process. So many things can change the process on how this goes.

 

[sahdgrower]

Yes I understand what I am shooting for now and how you need to be here to properly assess. I will continue to monitor as closely as possible and see what happens in the next few days. I would just buy some clones as back up but I am paranoid about RA and other pests. Starting from seed again would be bad too. I traded the better part of my last season outdoor crop for my equipment and so now I am running out of top quality smoke.

edit: just checked my plants since I went to bed at midnight, everyone is doing visibly better in the root department. Many roots are finally reaching out, I may be hitting my stride! Seems this whole time I have been under watering for fear of overwatering. I know better now the visual cues and how to interpret them. Even with veteran tutelage there is no replacing good old fashioned experience (especially when the veteran is thousands of miles away).

This whole process is increasing my learning curve rapidly and I am gaining several seasons of experience in just one season! Mr. Snype you are a scholar and a gentleman. Wish I cold buy you a cold frosty one. I can however give you my appreciation and gratitude.

Thank You Sir

 

[Snype]

Yes I understand what I am shooting for now and how you need to be here to properly assess. I will continue to monitor as closely as possible and see what happens in the next few days. I would just buy some clones as back up but I am paranoid about RA and other pests. Starting from seed again would be bad too. I traded the better part of my last season outdoor crop for my equipment and so now I am running out of top quality smoke.

edit: just checked my plants since I went to bed at midnight, everyone is doing visibly better in the root department. Many roots are finally reaching out, I may be hitting my stride! Seems this whole time I have been under watering for fear of overwatering. I know better now the visual cues and how to interpret them. Even with veteran tutelage there is no replacing good old fashioned experience (especially when the veteran is thousands of miles away).

This whole process is increasing my learning curve rapidly and I am gaining several seasons of experience in just one season! Mr. Snype you are a scholar and a gentleman. Wish I cold buy you a cold frosty one. I can however give you my appreciation and gratitude.

Thank You Sir

I'm sure even if you end up failing this early on this grow that you will learn something and the next time will be better. Clones are the best way to start this. When you use my process, it is very easy to grow the roots out but once you make a mistake you have to deal with each plant individually which most people would never have time for so you end up sacrificing some of your plants for other ones. When the roots are that small in these types of hydro, any small mistake can hinder that root growth real fast. That's what you want to avoid in the future. Being clean is very important and making sure all your equipment is sterile is also very important. I don't like those pots that you are using either. I'd try and use the exact same ones that I'm using. I have another pot that looks so close to the ones that I use now but the wholes are slightly different and you can tell that the plants don't act the same as with these pots. I can't explain to you why because I have no idea. I made the observation a couple months ago when I happened to have only a few of the other pots in the system and those roots were very hard to grow out compared to the others and I ended up tossing those plants in the end. Again I have no idea what some pots work better than others. I simply just make the observations and take notes of it. Good luck with the grow. You can still work out those plants. I have no idea how often you are supposed to be flooding but like I said before, if your roots are looking weird at the tips then you either waited too long or you have some sort of problem going on. That's what you have to figure out. Good luck.

 

[Snype]

48 hours of VEG-A. They can now be flooded and are being flooded every 8 hours for now. That will change any day most likely to 6 hours and within a week I will be flooding once per hour.

 

[sahdgrower]

Finally!!

Finally!!


Fuck Yeah!!!

 

[Snype]

[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=50492&pictureid=1186914&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]
Fuck Yeah!!!

Now you're getting there!

 

[sahdgrower]

That's not even the best of em, growing so fast I could probably watch them now! Thank god! I was starting to despair. My wife is going to get medical card so if I can work this out I can double my operation! So fucking stoked in this moment. I have almost built my second room to! What started out as me thinking about a small closet grow has blossomed into a full on obsession! I love it! Snype I hope your lady reads this and knows waht a fuckin nice guy you are!

 

[Snype]

That's not even the best of em, growing so fast I could probably watch them now! Thank god! I was starting to despair. My wife is going to get medical card so if I can work this out I can double my operation! So fucking stoked in this moment. I have almost built my second room to! What started out as me thinking about a small closet grow has blossomed into a full on obsession! I love it! Snype I hope your lady reads this and knows waht a fuckin nice guy you are!

So tell me the truth about the whole situation. Why were you having problems before the last day? What did you change to make them start growing the right way? Make sure you keep keep some data here of your flood times so other growers can learn from your situation. I'll keep mine going as well.

 

[Snype]

My flood times just went to every 6 hours now. So now after 48 hours of being in VEG-A in my conditions, the flood / dunk cycle went from 8 hours to 6 hours. So technically I'm i'm about 5 hours into day 3 of Veg-A. Within the next 2 days the flood cycle will go to either every 3 or 4 hours. By day 7 Veg-A I'll be flooding every hour. Luckily I was helping you out and showed you those pics because my girls computer deleted all my pictures but I still have the ones I've been doing for you. I lost a lot of my RDWC part 2 Tutorial data and pics though which is a huge set back. Anyway, I'm about to smoke some ChemdogDD and be pissed at the world. Glad things are working out for you. If your crop works out and you make some money, invest in my systems and the VEG-A stations that I have. It will safe you loads of trouble and it's not that much money. My 10 bucket systems are less than $400 for everything except the cages. The pumps are included in that price. Before you know it, you'll have 2,000 watts and a 10 bucket system producing at least 4 pounds a crop.

 

[sahdgrower]

Well the problem was that I was relying too heavily on the numbers you gave me but not paying close enough attention to the methodology. My plants were telling me to give them more water and I didn't listen. Basically that's it. Also I have been busting my ass with carpentry trying to build this room better and build more room around it so a small amount of exhaustion has been nagging.. My ultimate goal is to have it super clean and sterile so I can control all variables more effectively. Another thing I did was add air to the rez, since my e&f doesn't produce the greatest waterfall I think this is helping. Also last night I added a fish tank filter into the res as well. The funky smell seems to be dissipating so I figure I was not getting enough water movement in the res frequently enough. PH did not go up again overnight so I am hopeful I have not contracted pythium. All the plants are not only looking perkier but are really starting to grow.

So to reiterate succinctly, watering schedules are good guidelines but careful observation is a must. Interpretation of observation is even more important, however this is where there is no making up for experience, and this is what hurt me. Also very important was my crappy diy lid on my e&f system. Which made the net pots sit uneven and therfore I was not able to perfectly control the flood level equally on all pots, some got submerged a bit while others didn't even hit the water. I have a much improved version almost finished. This will not be a problem for me down the line.

Bright side is plants seem ok just a little delayed AND I will never repeat this mistake (at least to this degree).