Frosted Flowers from 7 Females - PPK

Hey all,

I haven't really been posting much, but started up another run and would like to use this space to keep track of things and perhaps get some insight and help along the way.

Time to fire up the PPK for a 1st real attempt using a proper medium for the system. My 1st attempt in the PPK system was a struggle due to using finer coco and having drainage/plugging issues. Despite nearly killing my plants mid-bloom I evetually took it to harvest and was amazed at what I pulled. Just under 2lb per light, but a personal best in my world.

I can't wait to see what I can do this time around. Unfortunately I lost my genetics chasing/cloning a particular strain which often goes wacko mid bloom and doesn't develop properly. After consulting with some friends I find that it's a odd trait that nobody can nail down as to why it happens and most have scrapped the cut. I'm foolish for letting other worthy cuts go and putting all my eggs in one basket and it cost me big (mostly in time and electricity).

I re-equipped with a few clones and a few fem seeds only to get one successful crop trying to determine what's worth running before having a catastrophic failure (tubing slipped off my pump) while I was out of town and returned to find a 32 plant 4 light room completely dead. I managed to save 8 - hacked them up and put them back under T5s to hopefully save some of the genetics for future use.

Needless to say I've had some shit luck lately.

Anyways, fortunately I had saved 7 clones prior to prepare for a proper PPK run. I had these in 5.5" pots in a little rigged top feed setup catching just the sidelight of a T5 light a few feet away. These clones were taken from a plant in flower a good ways so they've just been chilling for a little bit while I clean up and reconvert to run PPK style.

Don't know the strain - everything got mixed up. Hopefully I'll be able to identify once blooming.


So..these clones are older, but for the sake of my journal I'm going to call this:

Day 1 Veg (Nov 1st) - Let's go!






*These plants do have some mites unfortunately. Sprayed with SNS217 (rosemary oil). We'll see if I can conquer them. I have a Hudson atomizer at my disposal and would like to stay away from Avid.

*EC is 1.0 (Jacks + CalNit only at the moment in RO)
*pH is 6.1
*Delivered via wave pulse 30 sec every 60 minutes.

*Temp is just below 80F
*RH is around 55% (I'd like to build a fogger/humidifier and bring this up)


I'm currently running only 4 interior lamps dimmed down = 2400w total until these start to show signs of growth.

Room is 16x11 with 6400w (4 1k and 4 600w in corners)
7 Plants in older style PPK with 3 tailpiece per bucket.


Any questions or comments - feel free

Looks good, pulling up a chair

Glad to see ya back around and in action!

Are all your bulbs hps or any mh in there?

What medium are the plants in right now? Doesnt look lilr turface or floor dry...

How/what is your transplant process. I kept killing plants in mine :/

Man I love these big rooms.... Best of luck....

.

Thanks all.

All bulbs are all HPS and very old ones at that. I'll be switching to new lamps at the flip. Still debating on if I should spring for Hortilux or just run some generic Optilumes until I am certain I'll be successful in this medium/system.


DOD, the medium is in fact NAPA 8822 Floor Dry. I bought it a while ago and it's been sitting in my garage since. I attempted to wash it by dumping the bag into a yellow top strong box with a screened drain at the bottom. I'd fill, stir, drain again and again until the water wasn't as cloudy. It never seemed to get totally clear, but appear to be now that it's in the system for a few days.

My transplant process wasn't very thought out. I had been keeping these clones alive in floor dry just top fed a few times a day. When I tried to remove them from the 5.5 pots and into their new 7 gal home the medium just fell away from the root structure.. I then carefully placed into the 7 and filled napa around the existing roots.

Just crossing my finger they take. They've been in there a few days without dying so I've got that going for me.


I'll keep posting as my PPK adventure continues.

Sounds like it's been a wild ride so far! I'm going to pull up a bucket, spark a doob, and take a seat for the show

FlowerFarmer said:

Thanks all.

All bulbs are all HPS and very old ones at that. I'll be switching to new lamps at the flip. Still debating on if I should spring for Hortilux or just run some generic Optilumes until I am certain I'll be successful in this medium/system.


DOD, the medium is in fact NAPA 8822 Floor Dry. I bought it a while ago and it's been sitting in my garage since. I attempted to wash it by dumping the bag into a yellow top strong box with a screened drain at the bottom. I'd fill, stir, drain again and again until the water wasn't as cloudy. It never seemed to get totally clear, but appear to be now that it's in the system for a few days.

My transplant process wasn't very thought out. I had been keeping these clones alive in floor dry just top fed a few times a day. When I tried to remove them from the 5.5 pots and into their new 7 gal home the medium just fell away from the root structure.. I then carefully placed into the 7 and filled napa around the existing roots.

Just crossing my finger they take. They've been in there a few days without dying so I've got that going for me.


I'll keep posting as my PPK adventure continues.

Click to expand...

I guess let me advise you then...

Dont overfeed them right now. The root system isnt strong enough in the 7 gallon containers to be gettin hit with water every couple hours. Good luck man, watching you!!

Good advice, Dabs. I'm just learning this the hard way. I put my girls directly in the 7 gallon pots (with 8822) and it looks like a four hour cycle is still a little much for them. Any advice on how to feed when they're small?

What's up friends from the world wide web.


Quick update. Been super busy with work and other missions that I still haven't got my last plant into it's 7gal upper home. I really need to make this happen before this plant hurts my overall. With or without me however these ladies seem to be off to the races. I'm about 2 weeks later in these pics from the initial shots. We'll call this Veg wk 2. Plants look healthy.

Because I have my split ac constantly adding a bit of water into one of the plants sites it has me running at a 1.0 EC in the pulse rez despite feeding the bulk rez a littler higher at 1.2 EC.

pH.. in true PPK fashion.. who cares. I haven't checked it. I believe it was a little high at 6.3 a few weeks back, but I haven't bothered to test it. I've got a cheaper pH meter on the way because I'm sick of dealing with expensive meters. You can take the upmost care of them and they still need to be considered a disposable. With the PPK, I'm hoping to eliminate them entirely. Jacks + Cal Nit in RO seems to land me perfect around 6 or so.

I bumped my lights to 1k recently. Still running only the middle interior 4. I think it's about time to fire the Co2 up and crank on the corner lamps before these plants become unbalanced bushes. Just been trying to save on that juice bill because I'm a tight ass. New bulbs are pretty much mandatory before bloom this run as well.

Still at 30 sec feed ever 60 minutes (wave pulse). I knocked it down to 30 sec every 30 min, but turned it back to 60min after a few days because I'm not sure they benefited from it.

These likely still have some mites.. have hit them a few times with SNS 217.. not sure if this will do the trick or not.

On with the pics. Thanks D9 and all you others for the help along the way. I'm glad I discovered the PPK as I've been itching to get back to my roots (in hydro), and ween myself off of the o' so convenient coco...that I've been questioning with myself for years now if it's really all that convenient in my particular situations.. I always seem to struggle with cation issues in coco which always cause some lag before things take off. This PPK start has been pretty smooth so far. I'm hoping it continues this way.

Looking good! Nice pics.

My ph probe on my bluelab guardian isn't even hooked up right now, I'm a week into flower.. Your right who cares about ph...lol

I remember d9 mentioning he precharged his coco with a high ec of jacks to satisfy the cec.

Seeing that sante Fe in the corner reminds me I need to get a dehuey bad.

Get that girl planted already!

looks promising.

Just a thought, but I've completely given up on ph pens for anything other than my automated doser setup. Instead I switched to Gen. Hydro's ph drops. Short of the testing solution going bad (highly unlikely), there's nothing that can fuck up. Just fill the vial half full of water/nute solution, add 3 drops of the test solution, shake, and compare the color to the chart. Oh and the kit only cost ~3 bucks

FlowerFarmer said:

I'm currently running only 4 interior lamps dimmed down = 2400w total until these start to show signs of growth.

Room is 16x11 with 6400w (4 1k and 4 600w in corners)
7 Plants in older style PPK with 3 tailpiece per bucket.

Any questions or comments - feel free

Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the inspiring photo !

I have a few seedlings in rockwool and I'm debating their next home, rockwool slabs or dirt.


But I'm SOOO tired of vacuuming & cleaning. You have to be young to do dirt indoors, perhaps.

You're telling me. One thing I greatly miss was the cleanliness of straight hydro / be it hydroton, RW, or mediumless.

Despite the cleanliness of coco vs dirt. I can still shop vac my ass off and there will always be little specs of coco around my basement now. Unfortunately the floor dry isn't much better. Stick your hand down into some wet floor dry and it sticks to your hands, buckets, etc and is difficult to get off with having to rinse. Once it drys it's like kitty litter and can be vac'd up.

I'm liking the change up from coco back into recirculating hydro, but the new medium definitely was a different experience. While transplanting I was running around with napa stuck all over my hands not sure what to do. I didn't really want to rinse down my sink/septic and I didn't have any buckets of water filled to dip my hands in. I ended up making a bit of a mess and now have to re shop vac' my room.



Today I dropped the last plant into her home. I turned on the remaining 4 lamps, but unfortunately things are looking a little droopy now. The additional lamps slammed my RH down in the 30s. All of them are looking a little less perky, and the new transplant is pretty drooped right now.



This leads me to the question.. I don't really have a dedicated space to veg 7 plants in full on PPKs to keep this room perpetual. Most of what I've seen online are people growing directly in the system from the start. Has anyone tried vegging in a 4 or 6" rockwool block and then sort of nestling it down into the floor dry when they are ready to go into the final system. I realize that in a full pulse this might lead to the RW block staying too wet if the floods hit the bottom of it, but perhaps it would be a smooth transition in a wave pulse setting.

While I'm wanting to get a HydroFogger I don't have any forms of humidification at the moment.


I do have a Hudson Portable Atomizer. I'm curious if this can be set in the room on a timer? Here of the below specs. Is this going to be too large of micron to possibly blow bulbs.

This thing has a 2 gallon tank.
Precise output range 10-46 microns, particle size average droplet 20 micron
Adjustable output 1.5 to 14 gallons per hour


Or should I just start spraying with it as much as I can right before lights come on.

Also,

A friend of mine gifted me a few cuts. Here is what they look like after a few weeks under the t5s. The strains are darkstar & the purps. Anyone familiar with these?

Darkstar


The Purps

ok, tough crowd. Not much action in here, but here is a update and some more shots none the less.

23 Days veg.

Plants haven't been growing very quickly and I need them to hurry up before the 18/6 full wattage veg bills start hurting my pockets. I'm at around 40% RH right now and I think that when I turned on all of the lamps the rapid drop in humidity slowed things down.

New growth is thinner and smaller and just isn't obtaining the vigor that I know the PPK can offer. I also noticed some brown/blotches on some of my larger fan leaves. This caused me to take a bit more focus and I found that my EC is only around 0.7 - 0.8

I've been letting the split drain into one of the plant sites. This has been diluting my system. It was minimal at 1st, but now that all 8 lights have been on I guess it'd been adding more water then desirable. Today I drained down as far I could without a full change-out and then let the pulse res top back up with 1.2 EC. I'm no longer allowing the split to drain into the system so we'll see where it goes from here. I'm hoping the plants are just hungry and they'll start to pick up pace with this change.

Still not sure on pH. Guess I gotta grab some drops and check it. My meter has been elsewhere and I haven't really had the time dial this garden as I'm also building a 8 light table grow somewhere else with a friend... Ease of use so far has been amazing though.. I really haven't done anything here except clean the napa and load the plants.

Still using a wave style pulse (not full flood) at 30 sec every 30 minutes. I'm really sure what I should be doing here, so I've stuck with that. I've played around with it a bit, but seemed the plants were a bit more perky at the current duration. I need to devise a method to get more even saturation because I'm not sure 2 open 1/4" lines is sufficient enough. Really wish I would have just taped over all my holes before planting so that I could run a full saturation pulse.



My 7th lady which was delayed in transplanting into the PPK seems to slowly be bouncing back.

I've almost always grown with a wave type pulse and had great results. After time the wave turns into a flood because the roots fill in the porosity of the plant.