Al, thanks as always answering all my worries!! I really value what you are doing!
Thanks. Hope I'm able to help you make it sit up and bark.
My plan had been to wait for preflowers in order to allow my future mums max development prior to the first batch of clones being taken.
Max development isn't your concern at this time. You need to raise your seedlings (usually) for about 6-8wks under veg cycle light before they will show preflowers. No sense in doing any cuttings or sexing the plants until you have preflowers at the nodes.
Is 4 weeks unrealistic for preflowers? I have seen some claims that say 5-6 wks from other threads.
Yep, 4 weeks is unrealistic. 6-8 weeks is more like it. You may on occasion get some precocious plants that show preflowers earlier- if so, call yourself lucky. 6-8 weeks is more usual.
Also, everything is going well with he exception of the initial stretching that occured from the overwatering during germination-there are only 4 or 5 that have ended up real leggy. Since that occured to plants that are ultimately going to be maintained as parents will this recorded error be erased by the proper cultivation of the clones taken to flower? Thus erasing any penalty i may have experienced in the yield??
I would hope after raising the stretchy ones up a bit and pruning them back a couple times while they're vegging that they'll make serviceable mums. The worst that can happen is that these particular plants will have a long woody stem which will put the new veg growth closer to the light than happens with plants that haven't stretched. If you have a lot of vert height to work with in the mum area, this is no great crime. The stretch won't be passed on to clones taken from these plants any more than a mother lab rat with a tail cut off will bear tailless offspring. DNA doesn't work like that. DNA is like a computer program with a lot of IF/THEN statements. IF it encounters certain conditions, THEN it will cause the plant to grow in particular ways.
I'm curious as to what may be going on in your mum area. What kind of air temps are you seeing now?
al b. i have 5 medical cards, which allows me for 24 flowering / 12 immature. so im trying to do a mini rotation like your harvest every 2 weeks with what i have. unless u have a better idea? 30 plants veg to flower? i dunno..
ah, ok, that 'splains your low plant count and large pots. If you really must stick to a low number of plants, SoG isn't for you.
You should be using the 'manstem lopped' style, which requires that plants to be flowered get a couple wks of veg after lopping the mainstem to grow out the lower branches enough to give you a decent yield. Done right, you get plants that look like this:
I'd be guessing 4-6oz off of each one of these.
You could pretty easily fit 6-9 SoG pruned plants in the space occupied by one of these monsters.
However, the lopped method, since the top cola is not allowed to grow, yields a smaller avg bud size across the crop as well as allows small buds on the lowers to grow. This makes manicuring harder as no matter the size of a bud, they all seem to have about the same amt of bud leaf, meaning more leaf per gram of bud to trim off. Work, work, work...but you gotta do wot you gotta do. If you want big yields off of a low plant count, this is the way to go.
Al, i have a few questions about container sizing.
I Found some 2 gallon (8L) buckets at local store. They are about 7" x 7" similar to your pots I believe. Does this sound about right?
No, it doesn't. My 175mm x 175mm pots are about 4L in volume. (1 US gal = 3.78L)
My flood table only allows me to flood the bottom 5 inches of that pot. Do I just make sure that the water hits the bottom of the starter plug when flooding?
nonononono... the plug or RW cube used for cloning must
NEVER be touched by the flood level! They must be at least
1/2" ABOVE the flood level. If you allow the highly absorbent plug or cube to be saturated several times a day, your plants will quickly show overwatering symptoms. If your trays flood to 5", the bottom of the plug must be at 5.5". The pellets will be damp enough for the roots to locate and knit into them. Once roots are knitted into the pellets, which have a comparatively low water holding capacity compared to plugs & cubes, it's fine to flood them often, starting with 5x/day and upward for large, vigorous plants.
Tested out my flood cycle today and it took about 15 mins to flood the tray with cheap pump like you use. Should I step up to 150-200 GPH? Thought u used the tiny 50-80 gph ones.
That is a fairly long time to flood. I used cheap 400L/h pumps for many years; they took about 3-4 mins to flood my 900x900mm trays to the overflow. I've very recently replaced these with some 2000L/h pumps as they were only marginally more exxy than the 400s. I use my pumps to drain my tanks every 2 weeks, so a faster pump cuts the time for this job dramatically. I have adjusted my flood time down to about 2 mins per flood as that's all it needs (in fact, a bit less) to get to the overflow levels.
p.s al b. my hydro guy was selling me 800 gph sub pumps.... are those too big?
800 (US gallons / hr) = 3028.32943 litres per hour
Yeah, I'd say they're way more than you really need. Would make quick work of draining the tanks, tho!
Al, I have to say Thank You again! You are GREAT to take the time to sit down and help all of us who are trying to figure out this really simple hobby.
You're welcome.
I feel like I owe you somehow....
oh, OK, if you MUST, go on and send me your first-born... but only if it can mow lawns and run the rotohoe in the veg patch.
Within about 3 to 4 degrees F...what's that, like 1 or 2 deg C?
Your target range is 24-26C, which I spoze is 75.2-78.8F. As long as the room temp is stayng to no more than 2C above the ambient air intake, the vent system is working about as well as it can.
On Sept 4...but I began to smell that odor in the tank yesterday (Sept 6) and last night I had a MAJOR pathogen outbreak. pH was 7.8 this morning. The H2O was very cloudy and icky! I gave them a 5ml/L dose...again. Damn!
There is a lot of buildup...of pathogens I am guessing, in the bottom of all the flood pots. There is a fair amount of buildup, but less in the controller pot. I am sure there is a fair amount in the tank. Question: Should I be concerned about getting this crap out of the buckets & tank? or should I just kill it all off and keep reapplying the H2O2 until I can get between cycles and clean out the system???
yep, you may have to get in & do some cleaning. There's apparently enough buildup that it's not getting removed just by flooding & draining and may need some light scrubbing to get it all out.
Drain the tank, mix up 1/4 of your tank vol with 5ml/L H2O2, set pH to 5.8 and use that soln to clean all the water contact surfaces, using a bristle brush to loosen anything stuck. Pump that soln up into the trays to soak the rootmasses for a few mins & drain it back to the tank. When it drains out, dump it and mix up a new tank of regular strength nutes, again with 5ml/L 50% grade H2O2.
Think about it...if you bring him a small piece of growing marijuana, what have you just told him??? Bad idea!!!
That was my concern. Your hydro shop needs
very little information about you & what you do with their products. While there's
some hydro shop counter clerks who have a lot on the ball, they're rare as a BSEE working the counter at a Radio Shack. If they really knew what they were doing, they'd be running a productive grow op, not tending a retail counter for minumum wage. Therefore, it doesn't usually make a lot of sense to discuss your op with them. They get too much data and you're not likely to get anything but sold products that make a lot of profit for the shop...
i didnt call him again lol. u think my hydro guy is shady? i should stay away?
I'm not finding a lot of reason to deal with them, are you?
What size rez have you found to be adequate?
About 5L per plant works pretty well.
AL here are my diy cool tubes , Bought them on ebay 2 for $25 .
Well done.
However, I do see your ducting running downward. Unless you need to source and dump your cooltube air through the floor, try to keep ducting as straight and horizontal as you can. Warm air rises and if the ducting is like a rollercoaster, the blower will be working harder to oppose this air motion.
My ducting has its intake blower above the ceiling, pushing cool air into a duct which runs downward to cooltube level, but cool air sinks, so this is not a problem. The exhaust end of my cooltube duct run also goes upward, but the air is rather warm by that point, so I'm leveraging the rising motion of warm air to aid flow instead of opposing the air motion from the blower.
Also spaceing wise do you think 6- 152mm pots in a 420x610 tray will be crowding? That should work out to 6" pots in a 16"x 24" tray about 6" centers.
You can do as many as 4 per sq ft in SoG. I don't pack them in quite that tightly, I have 23 x 175mm x 175mm pots in each 900x900mm tray which works out to about 2.6 plants per sf.
However, isnt the CarboLoad nutrient from Advanced Nutrients basically Unsulphered Molasses?
Carbo Load is 'magic sauce' #1. Keep several kilometres between your op, your wallet and Carbo Load. Plants cannot use sugars as a nutrient. The only thing it will feed is microbes and ideally, you shouldn't have any in your op. We're not doing 'organic' here.
Even the name of 'Carbo Load' levers inapplicable science. The term likely comes from a practise called 'carbo-loading,' used by marathon runners, who eat a lot of complex carbs (pasta, usually) before a race because the carbs release energy slowly, improving endurance. However, cannabis plants are not marathon runners and they can't eat carbs.
Stoney McD had something to say about carbo loading in
How Not To Grow Dope:
33. Figured the plants wasnt carbo-loading enuff, so put a kilo of cooked spaghetti on the plants
34. Spaghetti looked naked, added bolognaise sauce
35. 2 weeks pass before the plants work out that there's any light comin from the LEDs
36. Phones hung around the seedlings keep ringin in the middle of the night, fucken annoying
37. Plants get stretchy, fall over and die again
38. Mould seems to like the molasses, decided to become a m0uld b4R0n instead
39. Accidentally got some mould up my nose, turned out to be 'magic' mould, kinda sykadelic and shroomy
40. Tripped for 3 days, watched my fridge turn into a white whale which called himself Kelvinator the Magnifacent and drank up all my bongwater
41. Came down long enough to build a hydroponic magic mould grow op
42. Got all me mates higher than Jesus on magic mould, suddenly couldn't grow enuff of it
43. Me mates started a bidding war for the magic mould and I became an overnite Ebay millionaire, fucken ace!
44. Government made 'magic' mould illegal the very next day, protesters hit the streets with 'DON'T BREAK THE MOULD' signs
45. Cops busted me for proceeds of crime, took me money and let me go
After putting the clone in the liquid solution of Water, B1, SuperThrive, and tad bit of rooting powder it looks exceptionally good today, compared to what it was. Now, when I take it out of the water, I should just dip it in the rooting powder, and plant it in moist soil? In my case, I use a mix of 40% perlite and 60% super organic soil, with some additives like lime and guanos. Should I keep the soil moist at all times, or will that wash away the rooting powder?
Are you doing a hydroponic grow? There can't be any soil in a hydro op!
I'll warn you now that I'm not a soil guy and won't be able to offer you much assistance with a soil op. This thread is in the hydroponics section of RIU for a reason.
That said, yes, dip in powder & plug in a damp medium. I use RW cubes for cloning because they work well on a heat mat. A heat mat speeds cloning dramatically. I not only need clones with lots of roots ready every 2 weeks to chuck into the flowering area, but cloning means which take a long time to root will tend to yield sickly, nutrient deficient clones which don't catch on so quickly when chucked in to flower.
thanks
