400W Medicine Cupboard

[JamieShoes]

Bean... if you're going to make the half step to coco, why not run one or two pots of straight coco as well, mate?... I'm almost positive you won't look back


How're those temps today, Indi?

 

[indifferent]

Outside - fuckin freezin

Under the LEDs in the veg cab it seems reasonable, but haven't got a thermometer in there, at a guess I'd say it's 24-26C in there. The amount of heatsinking I used for the LEDs doesn't seem at all excessive now, the panels are very hot to the touch. I'm glad I have used an absolutely massive amount of heatsinking on my 300w panel, I'm not joking, the thing probably weights 10-12 kilos, I'm gonna have to use some good strong hooks and chains to suspend it!

In my flower cab, steady at 24.summat at lights on, 15-18 during lights off. RH during lights on 45-50, during lights off still a worrying 85 but no signs of any mould or budrot. Friggin dehumidifier I ordered never arrived and I can't for the life of me find the receipt emails and the exact name of the site eludes me, so that's 35 squid down the drain!

But all in all, I'm happy with my environmentals, just want to get the rh down during lights out. I've been emptying my runoff tray of all moisture every day before lights off which seems to help reduce rh a bit.

I'm very happy to be back in coco though. Maybe I can convince a few people who use coco in soilless mixes but won't try straight coco to give it a try after my next run as I expect it will blow away my soilmix organic results for yield and the quality will be just as good. I'll make em smoke my coco buds and see if that convinces em! lol

Hopefully, bigger coco yields will allow me to build up some spare buds so I can head over to holland for a summer smokeout, I'm so bored of the cups and they are always during the shitty weather, so I propose a small meetup of a few peeps in the summer, maybe vondel park if the weather is really good or we could hire a canal boat for the day, always fancied that, we should call it 'Smoke On The Water' and make it an informal competition where we chose the best indica and best sativa and best hash. Gives me just enough time to start a couple of pure sats flowering! lol I can save some of my Oaxacan that's being blasted with UVB, might be most unusual! rofl

 

[indifferent]

The Highland Oaxacan Gold has been getting a hefty dose of UV for 5 days now and she is looking fine, no signs of any adverse effects. I have cut out the nitrogen in her feeding and she has pretty much grown out of the clawing from too much N. From now on she's just getting lots of P an K to make her grow nice big buds. I don't know if the UV has had any impact on resin production. I think I see slightly more resin, but I would expect to over 5 days.We shall see in another couple of weeks if this UV is having any effect I hope.

 

[indifferent]

Here are two shots of the same cola at roughly the same angle, 5 days apart. Looks to me like there is a fair bit more resin, and I am surprised at how many pistils have turned orange in only 5 days, perhaps this is due to the UV?

 

[Blimey]

Certainly looks more crystally to me....but 5 days can make a lot of difference...but those pistils are turning en-masse.

It will be interesting to see if it finishes quicker than expected with the supplemental UV.

Next time, maybe stick an identical cut on the other side of the cab, away from the LEDs...do a proper control sample.

 

[JamieShoes]

just finished an 8 hour trim sesh.. words are evading me... sounds like everything is under control in the cab mate


smoke on the water sounds fun, I'm definitely up for that.. I'll look into how much a boat will cost us

Speaking of bud rot and hash... this chocolope.. buds got so big I lost about 20g ish (dried) to bud rot... thats with RH no higher than 50% through out...and I took em early.. and even though I never handled them more than I normally would.. I got 3.5g off finger hash of 7 plants


the oaxacan certainly does look like it has more crystals

 

[indifferent]

Aye, I wanted to run a second cut in the opposite corner as a control, but I only had one ready. Second experiment will have two cuts for better comparison. Might use this strain again or something else, depends on what cuts I have ready I guess. I'm having a bastard of a time getting things to root at the moment, I think it's the cold weather.

Smoke On the Water has to be done, if you can find out how much for a boat, and it doesn't have to be Amsterdam I suppose Haarlem would be just as nice in summer and less touristy. Once we know how much we can work out how many people need to be there and how much it will cost each person, I imagine 20 people max and it wouldn't cost us much each to cover the boat hire, even with just a dozen folks it should work out not bad.

Shame about the budrot, turn the stuff with rot into QWISO or BHO.

8 hours is a lot of trimming, well done mate, 3.5g of finger hash is lovely, nice reward for that hard work!

Hope the postie drops by in the morn with the CDs!

 

[daddy fingaz]

Lovin the little LED setup, like a little ganga discotheque!

 

[indifferent]

Cheers mate. Plants appear to be loving their new purple lighting, they have visibly grown since the LEDs went in. They are all reaching for the light with leaves pointing upwards.

 

[indifferent]

The small Appalachia cutting I have in flower is smelling fantastic like rotten fruit and fuel, reminds me of chemdawg but fruitier, I think I'm gonna like this one. I am not sure of the exact number of days, around 55, she will get another 5 or so. Been flushing her for a week and the smell has increased a lot in that time. I have a much larger cutting of this one waiting to go into flower. I just found male flowers on one of my Bubblicious and it looks like the spindly one is also male, so that will make space for some new cuttings to go in. The Bubblicious and ******'s Jack I have in coco are growing a visible amount each day. They are in 3.5 litrepots and getting a litre of ec 2.2 feed every day and no signs of overfert! The runoff is large and as the pots are sitting on upturned 1 litre pots to keep them out of the runoff, there is a virtual waterfall of drips for several minutes, which must be pulling loads of air into the medium. I can't believe I ever stopped growing in coco as the difference in growth is just amazing. Hazyfontazy, please feel free to say you told me so!

They have been getting a spray every day with Plagron Phyt-Amin, Super Thrive and Seaweed and seem to love it. The male is the shorter of the two indica looking ones and looks like a very nice male indeed, very short stature, tight nodes, loads of branching, could be ideal to cross to my Jamaican.

 

[indifferent]

This ******'s Jack has been fed very heavily with PK and had a few PH issues in the last couple of weeks, been flushing her for the last few days, probably chop her in about another 10. Buds are the biggest I have gotten so far with this cut, this being the third one I've run. The one I have in coco only a week in is growing like mad though and should easily surpass this one in yield. I admire anyone who gets big yields in soil with organics, I can't!

My two Kentish Creme S1s are looking to be rather different phenos. They both look nice in some ways but not so great in others. The first one has tiny buds but they are plastered in resin and purple, this one has a great calyx to leaf ratio but the yield sucks, I image even in coco fed hard this one won't yield good.

The other one is similar in most regards but is much leafier. It may however, be even more resinous a the resin is all over the leaves, and seems to extend further down the larger leaves than the other one. This looks like a very good plat for hash making but will also yield poorly for buds.

I am going to cross cuts of both of these to the very indica bubblicious male I found, that should up the yield.

 

[Blimey]

Glad to hear you've got your coco mojo back!

That Appalachia is one sick puppy....awesomesauce.

 

[indifferent]

The coco itself is the mojo mate, you should try it yourself! It's so simple, mix up your nutes, pour em in till loads runs out the bottom, repeat every day and you're golden. Can't overwater, if you make any mistakes, can flush the pots so easy, makes things near foolproof, and the plants grow at hydro rates and yield like hydro, well almost, you can get that with drippers, but even with hand watering daily, performance is close to a good hydro setup. The really good thing about coco is you get great quality, which is often hard to do with a full on hydro system like dwc or ebb n flood. I could go on about the superior cation exchange ratio and the superb ph buffering, but without getting into technicalities- coco friggin rocks!

I'll have to share this appalachia cut out, I'm pretty sure I'm keeping the mother around for a good while yet. I haven't got her dialled in yet, that might take a couple more runs at least, and next run of her will be in coco, which is a different ball game again, but I will do my best to get cuts of this one passed along to folks wanting to try her.

 

[Blimey]

You've got me sold, mate. Next time I've got some wedge, I'm off to the shops! Even the dreaded hydro shop if all else fails lol

 

[indifferent]

You can use most nutes with coco, you might see a lil calmag def with a non-coco nute, but most hydro and soil nutes have enough calmag that they work fine.

 

[JamieShoes]

I'm a big believer in the power of coco too.. as Indi righty points out, its near jamieproof and allows you excellent results without an encyclopedic knowledge of bio organisms .. don't get me wrong.. I've seem the most incredable results in soil too, but it takes so much more experiance to nail down properly (imho)


coco is WIN

 

[cannaboy]

Get out the cement mixer!!!!!

Get out the cement mixer!!!!!

I used to grow 100% coco and chemicaly because I heard and scene the yields but these days unless its organic its not worth your bother unless your commercial. Coco is 1 of the best products and I use it always in many ways. It can help roots premote faster heavier harveasts and can airate and allow flushing. It works well in pots with a ebb n flow design with a top feed set up as well as the Wilma systems..It takes a while to learn that organics and is not like mix 3.5 of this and 4.6ml per quart or whatever of that its a simple love of feeding the soil not the plant (if that makes sence) coco has an ability to distribute nitrogen faster than any other available nutrient,, (don't know why but it says on the tin)

It is enert there is nothing till you feed it..

So I found out that 1 saturation of a freshly potted plant into a 6ltr size pot with rhizotonic at 00 ec or something ph 5.8 with 20% run off was all i needed till roots show from the pot bottoms then a further feeding of this kind was not doing as well as a 300ml per day instead of 20% run off.. or with a 30 min feed every 3 hrs on a wilma..

Now I do It my way...


Pot 3 clones,, try all combinations and have a go.... try it on brands of chemicals, boosters/bloomenhancers, or no boosters & plain water V's chemicals mabe pk 13/14 or 9/18, organically or chemicaly,,

I did and you should try this,,
1 pot of all mix, 1 pot of 50/50 all mix & coco, 1 pot of coco

Just ph the water for the soil pot to 6.3, however you do on your coco,, I use 5.8 and Hesi or Iguana,,, and feed the mix pot Hesi or Iguana at 6.3 and watch the 50/50 pot yield more than half again on the others don't cheat and give another more light by being closer or anything.. The trick is to use no feed but water in veg on a 50/50 mix and repot when roots show, then 2 week + extra veg on tap water then either beast with hesi or Iguana or tap water its whole life. Really this repot before flower should have enough micro-organizms in it to breakdown over a 10 week feed on ph'd tap water at 6.3 its a smaller yield than feeding for 5 weeks but then you must flush never feed over 1.7 to be sure of finest quality and try not to feed the ferts till the soil is dead as you will mess up the soil's ph and confuse how the plant is to take up food & water if you dont do the repot and it will do 1 and clogg the other leading to toxicity and low yields..

Try bigger pots also ...

You can use Hesi or Iguana for a mix of 50/50 or straight coco or straight soil and they are the best proven reliable organic supliments that make organics out a bottle easy..and feeding those ferts on a 50/50 mix is getting crazy yields of 100% organic Belive me I couldn't out yield every chem/fert grower organicly most I can,, it makes better smoke too, you just need to not worry and don't over feed as I bet that is the cause of the rusting on the leaves in your garden along with the small pots with salt buildup,, plant are too small for sureing up and the ends on your canes are exposed too ...

The Led system is cool but that pricet ag is a bit steep for the medicene hope you make it to the dam that sounds a good lil trip perhaps youd gis a shout when your off


BeAn...do 2 plants 2 different strains go 50/50 as per my mix and 1 coco as Jamie shoes and Indifferent suggeest You will see the root expressions on the two and your soil and molaccas regiem I know you like the organic way Bro I'll stand buy you there,,,






Organic work weighing in a 239g

 

[indifferent]

I've done all the reading on organics, microherds, worms and molasses as chelating agents, feeding the soil and the micro organisms, not the plant, all of it, and let me tell you, it takes a lot of time to learn academically, then a load more time to gain the hands-on experience to make it all work.

Then you spend all that time getting it right just to be handed a big, fat super tasty coco grown bud and you think 'why did I bother?' admit defeat and go get a sack of coco and some coco nutes and enjoy much bigger harvests without losing quality.

At the end of the day, organics is a lot of hard work and you can do better with coco and coco is so damn simple and the plants don't care whether the ions and molecules they take in are chelated in the stomach of an earthworm of in a factory in Taiwan!

Give me a few more weeks to get my coco plants blooming and I'll show ya why I love coco!

 

[indifferent]

BTW Iguana Juice isn't organic, it's mostly fish with some added salts. Also, it lacks the humic and fulvic acids and seaweed that are in Canna and other complete nutrients, AN expect you to shell out more moolah for the Grandma Enggy's F-1, H-2 and Seaweed, always the way with AN, their stuff works but the way they package it means you need a few bottles to get the job done. Apart from Barricade, their stuff tends to be more dilute than others, the humic is piss weak for instance and the sensi bloom and others have all got more water in them now than a few years ago. Europonic Fossil Fuel is 15% humic acid and costs less than AN's humic and is at least 10x stronger, with AN it's all marketing, all their stuff works, but all of it is overpriced, perhaps Barricade isn't, it's the most concentrated silicate on the market.

Some info on Iguana Juice:

Iguana Juice..a very potent formula,but as it is largely fish ingredients,it does have inherant problems.There is far too much truth in the old addage that "you are what you eat".When you use a lot of fish in a formula,you can be assured thee are inconsistancys in your meal.Unlike most critters,fish do not "shed" toxins or base metals...they store them.When we made our own fish meal,we used "morts"...baby fish that did not survive at the fish hatcherys.using young morts,assured us that no base metal levels were going to be high,and that the fish had not yet been exposed to "wild water".We would then compost the fish for 12-18 months(buiried in trenches).After this period of time the resulting composted fish and soil were slowly cooked down in 45 gallon drums.The resulting slurrey was then poured through screened buckets,and became our liquid nutrient base,to witch we would add a similar slurrey made from kelp.
Iguana Juice on the other hand,is simply "cold pressed".Basically all the ingredients are dumped together and then forced with a hydraulic press through various guages of screen.Cold pressing is concidered better than heat paturising as it doesnt cause a break down of essential vitamins.But the world is full of vitamin sources...a chunk of kelp contains more than enough for any form of plant life.

So where does that leave us with our bottle of Iguana?...simple...we need to retrograde the entire process.In my experimenting with the product,I finally settled on the following...
Iguana just isnt that great as a pressed concentrate....remember when it used to be 15 mils per litre?...too freakin pricey to use...but so much better a formula.So take it back there...1/2 litre of Iguana Juice and 1/2 litre of Seaweed extract into a 5 gallon bucket and 4 1/2 gallons of very hot water,a small powerhead pump for circulation,and you are on your way to producing a truely high grade Tea.Allow this mix to swirl for a week or so,then dump off the liquid through a screen into a large5 container.Add another 4 1/2 gallons of water and repeat.After about the third run of this,you have extracted about all you will get.You should have about 15 gallons of very potent tea,of a fine enough concistancy to run through even the finest emitters.(depending on the screen size you use.)About two cups of this tea to 20 gallons of water...and for at least two full crops...your good to go.

MET...just about everything you need is in there.Unfortunately...a lot of whats in there,is stuck in all those bits that float around.Again,the simplest solution is to simply unconcentrate it in a home brew.In veg...a litre of MET to 5 gallons of water,with 1/2 cup of Bat guano (texas guano...or insect eating bats only).In bloom,same deal but add 1/2 cup of Phillipino or fruit eating bat guano.Brew for a week with a pump for circulation,pour through a screen..and use at normal rates...ie. If the schedule calls for 3 mils per litre..add three mils of your new Tea to each litre of water.

In fact here is some unreleased poop on Iguana Juice...the reason it was reformulated to a mere 3 mils per litre instead of 15..was because a certain "Big" man in the AN organisation,was very miffed when a certain tech support person,was managing to pull the benchmark 2lbs...from only 860 watts...using only a single litre of product for an entire 8 week run.Its very hard to push an organic product that required a couple of hundred dollars worth of product to produce lessor yields than what a $22 bottle of food could.

None of AN's stuff has any kind of organic certification either, it's not OMRI certified for the US market and has none of the EU certifications either. Some alternatives to AN that are OMRI certified:

guana Grow ~ Bio Bizz's Bio-Grow OMRI Reg.
Iguana Bloom ~ Bio Bizz's Bio-Bloom OMRI Reg. They also have organic growth & bloom boosters - all OMRI Reg..
or a 3part OMRI Reg.
Nature's Necture Nitrogen, Phosphoris, Potash

Enggy's Seaweed ~ Bio Bizz's Alg-A-Mic (OMRI Reg.), Vitax Seaweed Extract or Maxicrop
Pirahna & Tarantula ~ Rootgrow mychorrizae
Carbo Load ~ Raw Dextrose powder from a homebrew supply store or Molasses
Enggy's Fulvic ~ Grotek's LXR Gold (OMRI reg.), GH's Diamond Nectar, Vitalink Fulvic
Enggy's Humic ~ Grotek's LXR Black (OMRI reg.), GH's Diamond Black, Vitalink Humic
Voodoo Juice ~ Green Planet's Root Builder (OMRI Reg.)

Organic B ~ Techniflora's Thrive-Alive (Green - is the organic version)
Sensizyme ~ Hygrozyme aka Grozyme (OMRI Reg.)

Hesi is good stuff, I'm using their Coco base nute now cos I had half a bottle left over from my last coco grow, then I'm gonna switch to Canna COGR Flores as I got some dirt cheap on ebay.

If you wanna do coco and wanna be organic, personally I'd go for this line-up:

Canna Bio Flores
Canna Bio Boost (optional)
Canna Bio Rhizotonic (optional)
Plagron Alga Bloom (1.5-13-14)
Vitax Liquid Seaweed
Vitalink Liquid Fulvic
Liquid Silicon (AN Barricade, Hydrogarden Budlink, Vitalink Silicon, any silicon will do)
Cannazym, Atazym or another good enzyme product
Molasses

That little lot is organic as long as you don't split hairs about whether liquid silicates strictly qualify, and will piss all over a soil and organics grow for yield and will match it for flavour. If you wanna get fancy you could add some liquid bat guano for extra taste enhancement and a bloom booster like AN Big Bud (the powder, not the liquid) or Grotek Monster Bloom, although just the Canna Boost is enough to get great results. Several folks I know who grow great gear in coco, cup winning gear, swear by the b'cuzz coco bloom stimulator in preference to Canna Boost, not tried it myself but will be doing when I run out of what I'm using now.

Personally, my coco regime is partly organic, partly not, I'm using this regime currently and liking the results a lot, it's the same regime I used to use with coco, just changed a couple of the products:

Hesi base nute (usually Canna Coco A+B)
Dutchmaster MAX Bloom (probably the best humic/fulvic product, has P and K in the form of phospholipids)
Kay's Seaweed Extract (local brand, kicks ass)
Molasses (NAF Horse Feed)
Hydrogarden Liquid Silicon
bcuzz soil booster (beneficial organisms and enzymes)
Agralan Revive (beneficial organisms)
BAC Bloom Booster (got a freebie, just using it up)
Plagron Alga Bloom (nice PK booster)
No Mercy Liquid Bat Guano (adds flavour)
AN Big Bud powder (another freebie)
House & Garden Roots Excelurator (freebie again, but probably the best root stim on the market)

I give the Alga Bloom from when the first buds form, slowly increasing the dose of alga bloom and decreasing the Hesi base nute, slowly reducing N and increasing P and K, aiming to cut out N by two thirds of flower. I start giving the Big Bud powder from mid flower. Everything else is every watering apart from the bat guano which is one a week from mid flower to add a bit of flavour and the Agralan Revive which is once a week. Flush for two weeks, three if you really want to maximise taste, but that will cost you 5-10% yield. I givethe Roots Excel for first 10 days of bloom while they root into their bigger pots for flowering.

Most cup winning buds of the last decade were grown in coco, I just can't think of any bad points. You can reuse your coco half a dozen times so no disposing of soil at the end of every grow, it's just awesome stuff. The way you can tweak your regime ad infinitum with hand watering to sit different plants is also a great feature if you grow loads of different strains at the same time like I do.

 

[Elevator Man]

Do give the Applachia cut out - the dimwit I gave the other five seeds to grew them out, didn't label them, and then lost the lot, so that's the only one going for now. I've got mine in flower now, so I just took a bunch of clones just in case, as I can't afford to lose it. I love the smell - like smokey mangoes, or something weird like that. I found it takes no more than 60 days in soil, so it should be a bit quicker in coco.