COCO, BLUMATS AND VEG+BLOOM. 1 GPW GOAL. GAME ON!

[Desert Hydro]

gbud you should do nicely with or without the veg + bloom. its great so far for me. i run everything at 1.6-1.8ec and then i add drip clean and silica blast as a ph up. i find 3ml per gal sits me around 6ph and its stable with blumats for me so far since they drink pretty quick in my low rh here.

i figured it was time for a REAL update. i had been talking about doing a v scrog for a while now and the wait is over. i tossed my moms in there and im lettin em rip! i can already tell it should blow away ANY gpw record ive had thus far by at least double. ive not done too well. i do alot of seed runs and until i found mosca ive had poopy luck. the search is over. i found my one lol.

goal for the v scrog is to double past yield per strain. i think its doable but we will see. if this works out i may devote one more light to it and save the rest for a small SOG or rock it all vscrog i just dont know if i wanna veg super long. i think 4 weeks under t5 would be enough to do 4 per 600 and fill the screen well.

the one plant i topped the hell out of and minorly defoliated(10fans or so) has stunted MAJORLY. its been like that for a few weeks. doesnt look like its really filling in much at all. still looks healthy but just super slow. gonna turn my 8 week strain into a 10+ lol. other than that all is well. they are getting majorly frosty. i dont know if its the addition of the silica or if they are just packing on because they are natural badasses lol. i wish i had a real nice camera to take macros. ive got clone cut and going in peat pellets. i did a bunch in my aerocloner and it was an epic failure. idk what the hell happened but like two rooted badass and the rest are dying slowly lol. back to the tried and true i guess haha

 

[Desert Hydro]

i think im gonna transfer to full on active hydro next round. i know, i know, im breaking up with coco but i will be keeping my moms in coco with blumats ALWAYS! gonna order another flo n gro. i had an ebb and grow way back but sold it when i moved. it was great. i love the 55 gal res and being able to set for a week or too. i will be keeping the veg + bloom around though

stay tuned for more. as soon as this run is finished up im gonna make room for the new system!! wont be more than a couple weeks. i will run the 12 sites first and then when my v scrog is all done i will add 6-12 more sites depending on room.

 

[Desert Hydro]

plants are getting heavy and toppling over lol. had to zip tie some stuff tonight. i think the low rh has stunted my growth a tad but they are progressing nicely none the less. they are getting FROSTY big time. i think there is an improvement over the h & g with no additives. my three hour away local hydro shop was having a sale so i went down and picked up a green trees multiflow system and a 6 site expansion to bump it up to 18 sites. my next grow will be in the hydro section. i look forward to getting back to my old ways. i had an ebb and grow years ago and sold it when i moved. between that and the VEG + BLOOM it should be a cool run.

 

[DocCrow]

About going hydro... have you checked out the PPK threads yet? Well worth your time. It combines the best qualities of many different hydro systems, with no air pumps, stones, etc. Super simple, and hard to kill your plants (which can happen easily in many hydro setups).

 

[Desert Hydro]

already bought my gear. im fully confident in the style i chose. the only real threat would be a power outage that lasted more than a day and then i would have to hand water. ive run this style of system before and it was a breeze.

 

[Desert Hydro]

some pics from last night. im gonna be building a humididfier based on similar principal of a swap cooler. im gonna take a rubbermade or bucket and cut a big enough hole for a 4" duct in the lid. on the other side i will install a uniseal and a foot or so of pvc. im gonna stuff the length of pipe with a sythetic filter type material wrapped around a section of tubing connects to a small water pump. the pump will pump water up the pipe and drain down over the filter material and the warm exhaust air from my t5 tent will get pushed into the bucket and up through the wet filter media. the warm air going up through the pipe of moist filter media should create a bunch of humididty while also cooling the air helping my room run cooler. i hope that makes sense lol

 

[Desert Hydro]

so adding silica was a bad idea for the blumats. ive got a TON of white buildup all over the dripper lines causing them to clog and its almost killed one of the critical kush. another problem which is going to severely hurt yield is that my biggest tsi fly that i topped multiple times and trained seems to have not liked that at all. it seems incredibly stunted and i dont even know if its gonna recover. one bud seems to be filling in and the rest are not at all. i dont get it. i will not be topping them or bending from now on. im just gonna use a tomatoe cage to keep them in check.

i hope i can work all these issues out soon. on top of all that i cant shake off the whiteflies. ive sprayed and sprayed. ive hung the hotshot no pest strips on the fans. nothing seems to be working. im gonna keep on spraying and possibly look into some whitefly predators in the future. i hope i can get rid of them before the next grow.

does anyone know a good preventative for whiteflies? like a neem dip or something similar i can hit the clones for next round with?

 

[BroughtSuperior]

hope they bounce back, tagging along!!

 

[Desert Hydro]

one is officially dead lol. dripper clogged and failed it only had about a week left anyways so it will still be OK. the rest will become brownies. the rest seem to be OK and the stunted one is filling in one bud at a time lol. its really strange. if all the buds fill in properly it is going to yield very well but i dont think it will ever fully mature.

 

[Desert Hydro]

lots of shit going on. shit is acting weird. clones finishing at different rates. Rh out of whack. just a bad run all around lol. things are winding down finally. i will be glad to have this one done and be on to the next run in hydro. the v scrog is kicking some major ass. filling in heavily. i will need to retrain pretty soon here. ive got a couple flushing atm. one is gettign chopped tomorrow. the herijuanas will come down in a few more days as well as one of the big tsi flys. ive got 6 aks vegging in coco and some tsi fly in rockwool ready to go into the new system when they are vegged up proper. im gonna hand water the ak's

 

[Rampant]

Hi bro, sorry to hear about your problems, white fly are a pain in the arse. I found em to be more of a problem than mites as they completely devour your plaants . Every year i get them on my houseplants on my windowsill and i once managed to transfer some into my grow room, chucked half of it away and ended up with trays of little bugs i had to kill off. A friend of minetold me to use a drop of lavender oil and washing up liquid to kill mites but that may work well on greenfly, def halted the mites. I just checked my cupboard and Savona kills whitefly, think its neem based and fairly cheap.
Interesting what you said about silica, i got enough problems with drippers as it is.
Good luck, I just had a terrible run myself, a lot of stuff for the bubbler.

 

[Desert Hydro]

updates! winding down finally. thank god lol. this run was a mess for sure. failed drippers. broken stems. whiteflies. i had it all. veg + bloom worked pretty good. i think i would run it again in a different type of system other than the tiny dripper lines. other than that i am happy with it and would reccomend it. i am bowing out to hydro and switching back to house and garden. gonna try and keep it simple and just run the necessities lol. im thinking cal, koolbloom liquid and maybe liquid karma. right now im flushing with molasses on all but one which is the weird stunted one that is slowly filling in. ive toned down the base nutes a tiny bit and started adding advanced big bud powder. things are looking great in the scrog. overgrown to hell but it is still gonna do great i think.

 

[Desert Hydro]

here is one of my tsi flys finishing up. gonna take her down tonight when ive got some time. the second pic is one of my pot of gold veglings. i think its a she, and she is getting fat! im really liking this structure a lot. if they finish like they are advertised i may have my new "go to" strain for big weight numbers. she's hindu kush x skunk #1. ive heard many good things about her so far.

 

[Desert Hydro]

trimmed up all the veggers. fimmed, trimmed and supercropped on some. im not sure if some of the seeds were fems or not. i dont think they were but i cant really remember atm so im treating them all like they could sprout testis at any moment lol. the POG and chemmy jones look the best out of all of them. i think they are gonna be the winners of the group but its still way to early to know anything. things are looking good for the most part. i decided to stick with the veg + bloom instead of switching back to h@g. im undecided whether or not im gonna use my silica blast or not. it seemed to clog up the drippers on my last run but idk if it is gonna cause issues or not in the ebb and flow. i think it will be fine in the hydro. everything looks great in the veg tent. the hydro veggers seem to need more food than the coco ones. i think im gonna bump up the feed for them a tad bit.

 

[Desert Hydro]

pics!

 

[Tropical Rain]

DH you ran many different setups.
I'd like to hear your opinions on them all rank and rated fore learning curve, ease of use, and yield.

I need a new setup. LOL

TR

 

[Desert Hydro]

ive done just about everything. ive done fox farms soild and pbp and that works fine. growth isnt as fast as hydro, tus yielding a bit less in the same amount of time but its a solid method if thats what youre comfortable with.

DWC's are great with fast explosive growth but you need to fill them and swap out the nutes pretty often. if youre ok with that and stay on top of your shit its a good cheap way to get into hydro. i started out with gen hydro 3 part and it worked fine and its cheap.

straight coco works great and its pretty fast growth. keep up on the calcium and it will do great. i only monitor ph going in. seems to work fine.

blumats in coco are great if you get them dialed and running right. be careful about what nutes you put through them though. they can clog quite easily and lead to dead plants lol. if you want to do an all organic grow in soil i would say 100% go with a mixed super soil where you add all your ferts into it and then run straight water through your blumats.

ebb and flow is great and it has the versatility of being able to do a few big guys or a TON of little guys in 4x4's. you need lots of water for the big res and the nutes need to be changed every couple weeks. some would say every week. i love ebb and flow for a SOG. shit works great. if you get that perfect SOG strain it cant be beat by much at all.

my new venture is an ebb and flow modular bucket system. ive had one before and it works great. just a giant ebb and flow system where each plant gets its own site to grow in all fed together off one res. if you can afford the initial investment of 400-500 its a solid investment. next run is going to be this system KISS, running only veg+bloom and drip clean. may use silica as a ph up, but since im using growstones as a medium, i think during breakdown they let out some silica but im not sure.

if youre DIY friendly these are even better. i love to build these systems and tinker around. ive spent a lot of time and money messing around with new ideas and what not trying to find what system works the best and what nutes are the best. i still dont think there is any clear winner. if youre dedicated enough to put the time and effort into a 20 piece nute line and a high tech system are you gonna kick some ass? most definately. but i could probably come close to the same results with minimal time and effort using a one part nute and hand watering lol.

i think for me if plant count was not an issue i would run 1000w over a 4x4 table with a big SOG in rockwool cubes and just do a bunch of colas. no down time on the clones with veg time. its like a 4-5 day veg from roots and then straight to flower. but then you need a fat mother plant and a good way to take cuts.

 

[Desert Hydro]

look at the difference a couple days makes on these clones. its rediculous how fast they are growing and recovering from the defoliation and supercropping. the stems are already fat as hell for their size. i cant wait to get these into their new home! they are gonna explode! who says you cant get great results off of a 1 part powdered fert and KISS????

 

[Desert Hydro]

i just ordered some encarsia formosa from an organic pest control company online. they are a parasitic wasp that are supposed to be super tiny and they attack whiteflies and lay their eggs in whitefly eggs. i was gonna order 1500 lady bugs but the wife said no hahahaha. i promised her they would behave and stay in the garden but she didnt believe me lol. i hung up 6 new whitefly traps today and they are already filling up. they are coming back pretty strong right now. i cant spray most of my plants because they are late flower so i am hoping the wasps kick some ass in there.

 

[Desert Hydro]

they all finally finished up. the rediculous monster never quite filled in like the others i dont know why. oh well. the other one of the same clone turned out great. next round is 12 tsi fly in the greentrees ebb and flow buckets under 1200w. should get interesting. im also gonna run a 2x4 tent with two 90w LED units. they are 90w actual usage with 45 3w USA bridgelux LED chips. testing out some new gentics under my first LED's in a DIY drip system. if they look promising under the LED's i will keep them and run them under HID's in the future runs. depending on whether or not there is room in between the greentrees buckets will determine whether or not i can squeeze in my coco AK's under the HID's or put them under the LED's with the seed test. i hope to get them under the HID's because they are productive plants and great quality with that classic skunky, coffee cheesy smell. its fantastic smoke