2 site Super Lemon Haze T5 RDWC ScrOG

[Major Blazer]

Never did a grow journal. Relatively new to photoperiod varieties, first RDWC. Previous grows were all autoflower varieties in a single tote system under LED - super micro grows.

At the start of this grow, my intent was to create a big, single plant ScrOG. Unfortunately, I had a bout with pythium after an a/c out incident occurred and res temps were 88* when i came home. With the use of CX Hydroponics Wilt Guard and Regen-a-Root, I was able to fix her up real nice but I still wasn't happy with the rootball and figured it wasn't worth completing the grow just to suffer from what I expected to be a reduced yield. So I cloned her (which is said to be a no-no with pythium) just to see what would happen rather than popping another bean.

The cloning process was not without problems either. I had purchased a 200gph water pump from Harbor Freight which died on me after only a couple of days of use and the girls dried out pretty bad before I had an opportunity to check on them and get the pump replaced. Approximately 16hrs with no water. I replaced the pump the next morning and within a few days, they were all rooting well, albiet with some of the fan leaves left looking like crap and deficient of nutrients.

So I transplanted two days ago into their permanent home, a 24"x48"x60" tent. I am using a homemade 3 site RDWC system, holding 12 gallons of water/nutrient mix. I am using Blue Planet nutrients and I'll be using the CX Hydroponics Wilt Guard and Regen-a-Root throughout the grow as well. Oh yeah and supplementing cal-mag as well. Grow medium is hydroton. I'm a bit of a sucker for marketing and grabbed some HTG Supply "Rhizocore" bucket lids while placing my bulb order. They're nice to look at anyway. Lighting is an 8 bulb T5. Currently I am running half lighting with 14" of spacing until the transplant shock is over. They definitely perked up today so I'm guessing I'll be dropping the light soon and blasting all 8 bulbs. Bulbs for Veg are the "Pure Par" variant from HTG and for Flower I'll be using standard 3000k. Room temps sit at around 79* with the lights on and drop to 72* during lights off. Humidity is at 53% right now and fluctuates up/down by 10% with day/night and lights on/off. pH'd water to ~5.6. I'm super happy that my city tap water is between 60-70ppm but they have some strong buffers man. It takes about 4 days for the pH to stabilize.

Ummm what else...airstone in each bucket obviously. Using a commercial "Air Pump 1" from ecoplus. Noisy bastard but waaaaay better than the WalMart ones I used in the past. Lights are 18/6 for Veg. I indent on investing on an EC meter soon bc I think I waste a lot of nutrients and change res too often to compensate for unknown fluctuations. Definitely by flower stage I will have one. The girls will be topped at least 2x. Nothing interesting to see yet but I'll keep this updated as changes occur.

 

[Major Blazer]

Root progress - looking good so far, no signs of pythium.

 

[Flavor Horse]

Subbed.

 

[Major Blazer]

10 day update

Clones are showing some signs of deficiency, but I think it's because of transplant and pH issues. I calibrated my meter yesterday and found that I was reading .3~.4 too high which put my nutrients in too acidic of a state. So now its up to about 5.8 as of last nights and the girls already look darker.

Lefty is about 7 days behind Righty. Righty had no rooting issues after the transplant but Lefty was a bit stunned. Lefty's roots are now starting to sprawl out of the net pot where Righty is starting to explode. I supplemented Lefty with foliar spray at night to try to keep her up to pace while she rooted - no comparison to a nice set of roots though.

Tomorrow I have a day off and will do a reservoir change, although I don't think that its necessary yet. Really need to get an EC meter, funds are tight though and I just had to make an unplanned repair my truck, so we'll see.

I also sprouted a new bean (Dutch Masters "The Edge") which is hiding under Lefty in the tupperware.

 

[Major Blazer]

2 week update from transplant

Did my first flush of the nutrients yesterday. It is so much easier with an external reservoir, very thankful I did that. The girls are looking better and better. I'll probably perform the first topping in a couple of days after they settle in and adjust to the new food. I may wait a week and allow the left plant to catch up a little more. The roots for that plant are coming from the oddest of places - even growing upward. I guess that's what I get for the sloppy clone job I did. Anyway, I'm pretty sure she'll be fine in the long run, just a little durp now. I would also like to get my humidity up a little more in there, its around 45%

 

[widowmaker31]

Looking good.....welcome to the RDWC club. I'm running a RDWC by current culture. I will post setup pics today.

Stay tuned!

WidoW

 

[Major Blazer]

An update

Things I've done:
1. I poisoned my plants with nutrients. I was following guidelines from the manufacturer, to about half strength, and I got Nitrogen toxicity. I caught it quickly and diluted the crap out of my water to fix.

2. I bought a TDS meter. Should have had this from the start. While I realize that PPM's themselves have no relevance since the measurement is based off of a non-standard calculation derived from EC, it is all relative once you get to know your meter so idgaf. Luckily, many other growers have thoroughly documented the variance of results from misc TDS meters. Mine is a Hanna, so it reads lower than some others. That said, after buying, my PPM's were sitting at almost 900 AFTER the dilution of my nutrients. Jesus I really fed the piss out of them.

3. I did a complete flush again so that I could get things dialed in properly from the start. To begin with, my city's water PPM's are closer to 160 when I thought it was around 90. So I got some RO water and am running a half and half mixture. Nutrients are about quarter strength and now my PPM is at about 500, pH'd. pH is about 5.7~5.8. Plants are excited and recovering after I poisoned them.

4. I topped them.

5. External reservoir 2.0 happened. This is how I wanted to do things from the start but had difficulty with the inline pumps I purchased. The Ecoplus line of pumps are said to be just fine when run inline according to the internet collective, but in reality that was not the case for me. A buddy of mine who is a fish tank guru helped me here and after some trial and error, we settled on a bit of teflon tape around the manifold of the pump. The seal is perfect and the stability of the water temperature is significantly improved with an inline. I can drop a 1ltr frozen bottle in there and not have to worry until about 8hrs have passed. With the submersible pump I was replacing bottles every 4 hours and actually, couldn't even keep them in the freezer long enough for a proper freeze. Now that is not an issue at all. I have an abundance of frozen bottles and need much less to do the job significantly better. HUGE win for me, now I dont need a chiller. YAAAAAS

Plans:
In a couple of weeks after a full recovery from topping and my nitrogen toxicity issue, let her bush out some more and decide whether a 2nd topping is necessary given my space constraints. If so, I will top all bud sites and Veg a couple more weeks. If not, I will add the ScrOG net and begin flower. Pics of the plants are funny given the cloning issues (which made for ugly lower growth) and Nitrogen issues (ugly middle/top growth), and now some good new sites are appearing. Luckily the roots are pretty and vast so I think these girls will still flower well. Anyway, I think an honest grow journal is necessary and this has been one fucked up ride, mostly all my mistakes. Definitely be cautious about N levels in SLH, this level of sensitivity is a first for me.

 

[Major Blazer]

Progress update

They've bounced back from the topping nicely. I did some lower defoliation a couple of days ago too, hence the bonsai look. There's a few lower shoots I am hoping will get bigger as they have potential for good bud sites. Nutrients are all dialed nicely now - TDS meter FTMFW. This strain seems to be very happy vegging at around 500ppm on my Hanna. Some days she drinks up more nutrients than water and others its visa-versa. I'm at the point where they're drinking about 1gal /day combined so things are picking up. I also started mixing my nutrients with 50/50 RO water as I've found the city water here to be a lot shittier than I initially realized.

Side note - nosey ass MF at the fish tank store would not stop asking me about why I needed RO water if I didn't have a fish tank. Next time I'll research fish tanks and pretend to own one lol. I didnt want to dig myself into a downward spiral of lies about a subject I know nothing about but it may have been better to just pretend to be a fish tank n00b.

If you're wondering about the towel and fan - I'm battling tent temperatures and lack of RH so I've been experimenting. The towels are soaked so I was seeing if the evaporative effect would cool and humidify the air from the fan - didn't work. Actually tent temps got higher. The temps are lower when the fan is up high and blowing across the surface of the T5 tubes.

I really made a mistake when calculating size of tent to light. The 2x4 tent is exactly what I wanted but the light is basically exactly 2x4 so my fan (6" in line duct booster) is struggling to get air around it. Those pvc pipes exist to create an air gap and allow air to pass through more easily since the light is essentially a wall in the way of air movement. I'm super interested in DIY modular LED's right now and may build one prior to flower just to improve on my air flow. I can't really see another way around this - perhaps a DIY 4x3 tent. I dont want things to go amiss at this point and I really wanted to see it through all the way with T5's which I've never used before.

In about a week or 2 I plan on supercropping before flipping to flower. All in all, I am stoked about where these girls are now. We've come a long way.

 

[Major Blazer]

ppm down to 460 today,1.5 gal water consumed in 2 days, pH drifted to 6.0

Added a hot mixed 1.5 gal water pH'd down to 5.3. Got my nutrients back up to 500 and pH to 5.7

I just read a whole thread about how defoliation in veg is pointless or worse, counter-productive. Well I can say that the goal was to get lower growth to extend out but so far, that is not happening. The plants recovered a lot faster than some opponents say they will, but I can see how it may be a pointless waste of time.

Anywhoo, they posed for the camera today.

 

[whitebb2727]

Looking good.

 

[Major Blazer]

 

[Major Blazer]

They're getting so thirsty now. I'm topping off about 2 gal every day and a half. Ppm on my Hanna is still in the low 500's. I seem to have found the nutrient sweet spot as well as the cause of the Nitrogen issue - the Vitamin B supplement. I've read a bunch and apparently Vit B is a huge waste of time anyway. Well it was free when I got my nutrients so I gave it a shot. Perhaps I'll try again with another strain in the future.

For now, I'm anticipating a large stretch during flower and space is clearly an issue so on the next res change day (30th), I plan to flip to 12/12 and instal the ScrOG. I wish I could put the brakes on the plant on the right so that lefty can catch up. She's like literally one week behind and I wouldn't mind waiting if I could figure out a way to do that. Ideas?

 

[Major Blazer]

Scrog installed

Added 4 3k bulbs

Switch to 12/12 tomorrow or thursday, whenever I do a res change.

 

[Major Blazer]

Update.

Light flipped. Let the stretch begin. These slores are looking damn fine though.

 

[Major Blazer]

BTW so you all know and not to confuse anyone, I lift my light when I take pictures - it normally sits inches away from the top of the canopy. A little too close with the recent stretch starting - burned some leaf tips the other day.

My ppm on my hanna was at ~660 when I changed to flower nutrients a day and a half ago, today it is at ~550 so clearly the plants are not over fed. They are showing no signs of deficiency as far as I can tell. pH drift from 5.8-6.1

For 8 gal 50/50 RO/Tap (at ~160ppm) I added:
30ml Micro (blue planet)
30ml Bloom (blue planet)
20ml Grow (blue planet)
20ml Early Bloomer (blue planet)
25ml Cal-Mag (botanicare)
20ml Liquid Seaweed (blue planet)
40ml Regen-a-Root (Cx Hydroponics)
40ml Wilt Guard (Cx Hydroponics)

I'm currently trying to decide what they want more of. Going to email Blue Planet.

 

[Dankroots619]

Subbed, looking good major

 

[Major Blazer]

So it's been a little over a week since the flip. They've slowed a bit in growth over the last couple days but I think that's bc I've been defoliating undergrowth.

On that subject, I know that some people say its bad to defoliate, but atm, my tent RH is at 73%. Prior to defoliation, it was over 80%. Between the ScrOG filling and the footprint of the lamp, airflow is becoming an issue and therefor, so is the RH. You can see it on the leaves if you look close up. I'm rigging up some PC fans to blow across the top of the canopy to contend with these conditions.

 

[calliandra]

So it's been a little over a week since the flip. They've slowed a bit in growth over the last couple days but I think that's bc I've been defoliating undergrowth.

On that subject, I know that some people say its bad to defoliate, but atm, my tent RH is at 73%. Prior to defoliation, it was over 80%. Between the ScrOG filling and the footprint of the lamp, airflow is becoming an issue and therefor, so is the RH. You can see it on the leaves if you look close up. I'm rigging up some PC fans to blow across the top of the canopy to contend with these conditions.
View attachment 3584239

bah nevermind some people, defoliation is actually the first thing (if ventilation is already a given) to do in my book if humidity goes over the top - because I've seen how effective it can be So good call!
Your girls are looking stroppingly healthy -- weave 'em!

 

[Major Blazer]

Lol you're so right. This morning, my RH in the tent was 63%. You can't argue with results.

As for the weaving, that's an issue ive been having. 1. I didnt cross weave the treads when i made the screen so the horizontal row just lifts up freely. Durp move. 2. I cracked the main stalk on one plant when barely putting any pressure on a far off branch when trying to weave. Also, the tallest branches are at their farthest regions without hitting a wall so I'm kind of out of room. Woops. I was going to let them stretch a bit more before I attempted any more weaving though. What do you think?

 

[calliandra]

Lol you're so right. This morning, my RH in the tent was 63%. You can't argue with results.

As for the weaving, that's an issue ive been having. 1. I didnt cross weave the treads when i made the screen so the horizontal row just lifts up freely. Durp move. 2. I cracked the main stalk on one plant when barely putting any pressure on a far off branch when trying to weave. Also, the tallest branches are at their farthest regions without hitting a wall so I'm kind of out of room. Woops. I was going to let them stretch a bit more before I attempted any more weaving though. What do you think?

I think weave 'em lol
it's now or nevermore

Yes the cracked stalk, careful there indeed -- can you somehow tie/ducttape it to another part, like a strong side branch, so it gets fixed in position and doesn't break through when you manipulate the branches?

Yeah I see those branches that are taller right on the screen edge -- but you can weave em towards those spots of the screen that are still empty.
Pull them under the screen.
Bend the branches a few times in the direction they're supposed to go, first very lightly as not to break anything, especially if they're already getting a tad "woody". Make use of the bend they already have from straining towards the light from under the screen if you can. You can also tie the branch to the screen where you're going to make them change direction.
Branches can be detoured up to 180° from where they were going