Hot Diggity Sog - Chapter 5: The Big One

[Hot Diggity Sog]

Love the vertical light setup

How much are you expecting to yield at this point? She's pretty big

I don't really have a guess. She has tons of flowers but they are all small. I guess the strain just doesn't do the big donkey dick cola's that we all love. She's supposed to be a 10 or 11 week strain so there's plenty of time left but I think we're far enough along to know what the general size and shape will be.

 

[EmeraldØsiris]

Good question. I now think it is the strain. It first showed up in Veg when I got a minor russet mite problem. It showed up again during flower when the weather changed and got really cold - it took me a few days to bring on a heater and get my temps dialed in.

My PH levels no longer seem to hold steady and I have to adjust frequently but am I managing them well. 5.8 and 6.2 is the range I allow it to float.

At the end of the day, I guess I'm not positive what the cause is.

Looks like a phosphorous deficiency from PH value over 6.5. If you have clay pebbles they will bring the PH up because they are alkaline. Could just be strain tho could try a run with 5.4 and see if that helps

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

Looks like a phosphorous deficiency from PH value over 6.5. If you have clay pebbles they will bring the PH up because they are alkaline. Could just be strain tho could try a run with 5.4 and see if that helps

I use the Blue Lab Guardian for my PH and EC monitoring and I never let the PH get anywhere near 6.5. It seems unlikely to be PH related and I only say that because I micro manage my PH...I check and adjust many times a day. But...who knows. The plant seems otherwise very healthy.

 

[EmeraldØsiris]

No doubt, looks very healthy. I had this same issue with critical +... Turned out very dank and potent.

 

[MATTYMATT726]

The plant looks way too god for it to be PH. It'd be farther than just stems im sure. Cold temp/cold water feeding is a sure bet with how good the plant looks. Can't wait to see the finish.

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

The plant looks way too god for it to be PH. It'd be farther than just stems im sure. Cold temp/cold water feeding is a sure bet with how good the plant looks. Can't wait to see the finish.

I'm waiting for a black muslin (backdrop) to arrive today. Going to be updating the journal tonight and hoping I can improve the photography with this

 

[MATTYMATT726]

Thought that said "black muslium" to arive XD i was like ok.... this is what happens after a long 4 day weekend and going back to work tonight -_-

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

Day 128
Flowering - Day 49

Last day of week #7. I'm experimenting with using a backdrop for this update. I'd like to try and start learning how to take higher quality photos. If anyone wants to, feel free to chime in and teach me how to do it right! I experimented a little with some different lighting for taking pictures. I tried some 6K and 10K metal halides but those weren't very good. Turns out the 4000K Quantum Boards provide the best lighting that I have. Please let me know if you have any suggestions...are the pictures too large? Too small? Would you like to see more closeups or more pictures of the plant as a whole?

Not too much to report - things are going quite well. I have the temps and RH pretty much where I want them. It took a while to get things dialed in but I feel pretty good where things are. It's reached single digit temps outside - 2 months earlier than it should so I was caught a little off guard. I've been running my heater on medium and it turns on when the lights go out and shuts off when the lights come on. Night time temps in the room are 66F. Ambient room temps with lights on rise to 70F after a few hours and then hover between 70 and 72 all day long. I have my exhaust fan set on a timer: 15 minutes on, 1:15 off. This is really the only way I can keep the humidity elevated and the temps from being too low. Canopy temp is between 73 and 77 and the difference is when the exhaust fan is running or not. 75 is where it hangs out most of the day. I've been able to bring the humidity up a whole 10 points by controlling how often the exhaust fan turns on. Ambient room RH is between 52 and 62% and canopy tends to be about 10% less of whatever ambient is. I'm not brave enough to bring it up much higher. The one thing important to note is that she drinks considerably more water when the humidity is elevated.

Onto some pictures!

 

[EmeraldØsiris]

I use to fotograph strippers in my home studio during college I'm not sure what camera you are using, but no light is going to compensate better than the light which is already on them. It would probably be better to reduce the light and compensate with a flash. You can tell from the color of the black in your backdrop that there is too much light there. You can also raise your shutter speed. Low aperture for single bud shots, higher aperture for whole plant. The blacker the background the lighter the bud the better. You should see creases in the backdrop, then you know the right black color. Basically you are overexposing.

 

[EmeraldØsiris]

I use the Blue Lab Guardian for my PH and EC monitoring and I never let the PH get anywhere near 6.5. It seems unlikely to be PH related and I only say that because I micro manage my PH...I check and adjust many times a day. But...who knows. The plant seems otherwise very healthy.

I found this video from Metrop very useful:

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

I use to fotograph strippers in my home studio during college I'm not sure what camera you are using, but no light is going to compensate better than the light which is already on them. It would probably be better to reduce the light and compensate with a flash. You can tell from the color of the black in your backdrop that there is too much light there. You can also raise your shutter speed. Low aperture for single bud shots, higher aperture for whole plant. The blacker the background the lighter the bud the better. You should see creases in the backdrop, then you know the right black color. Basically you are overexposing.

Time to break out the 'ol manual on my camera then! I bought this camera just for my journals - never ever owned one. Total noob...lol
I bought it in 2014 - it's the Nikon D3200

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

I found this video from Metrop very useful:

Good video, thanks for sharing. These are some examples I've studied to try and understand:
https://www.420magazine.com/community/threads/ph-and-nutrient-uptake-charts.114733/

This is why I call my home base 5.8 but I will let my PH drift. I not only let it drift, I encourage it to drift. 6.2 is the upper bounds for me.

 

[EmeraldØsiris]

Good video, thanks for sharing. These are some examples I've studied to try and understand:
https://www.420magazine.com/community/threads/ph-and-nutrient-uptake-charts.114733/

This is why I call my home base 5.8 but I will let my PH drift. I not only let it drift, I encourage it to drift. 6.2 is the upper bounds for me.

It's interesting what he says about clay pebbles and rockwool will increase PH over time as they are alkaline. The question is whether your clay pebbles are raising your PH from your upper bound 6.2 to 6.5+ somehow? Those stems are pretty purple but maaaan do those flowers look tasty

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

It's interesting what he says about clay pebbles and rockwool will increase PH over time as they are alkaline. The question is whether your clay pebbles are raising your PH from your upper bound 6.2 to 6.5+ somehow? Those stems are pretty purple but maaaan do those flowers look tasty

I just can't say for sure. On several occasions, I've pulled my Blue Lab probes out of my control and put them into the plant tote and every time the temp, PH and PPM's were identical. I was a bit concerned that I could see differences - either warmer temps or PH/PPM differences. But I never saw differences, not even once.

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

Trying to learn how to take better pictures and wanted to share a few close-ups



That last one is a legit fan leaf.

Next real update on Thursday...until then, cheers

 

[led1k]

That last one is a legit fan leaf.

That's an incredible amount of resin!! Killing it.

 

[swedsteven]

Wow lov3 your grow
Why did u choose to do a setup like that UNIQUE

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

Wow lov3 your grow
Why did u choose to do a setup like that UNIQUE

I've never grown a large plant and wanted to see just how crazy I could go. It's really that simple. lol

 

[Hot Diggity Sog]

Day 132
Flowering - Day 53
T-Minus 20 days (ish)

Still struggling to take higher quality pics - especially when shooting the whole plant. I think I have WAY too much light still. The way I shot tonight was I turned all of the lights off except for the bottom row of 1 tower that has (2) 4000K QB's. I turned it around and faced it against the wall and away from the plant....still too much I think.

Not too much to report. As I always do in hydro, I'm battling PH drops that are fairly severe. I'm trying to turn this negative into a positive by letting the PH swing between 6.1 and 5.7 twice a day. The problem (and concern) is that I have to add obscene amounts of PH up. I'm pretty much on a 5 day reservoir change schedule because of this. I'm not going to bother going into details on this...it is what it is.

I started my last round of defoliation after this shoot. Continuing to focus mainly on the inside where the fans and lights can't really reach but I'm also removing some fan leaves (not many) that are on the outside - focusing on the ones that are have been burned a bit by the QB's as well as the ones that are heavily shading other branches.

Starting to drop my room temps just a bit. My heater is now on the lowest setting (300 watts) and it turns on 90 minutes after lights out and turns off 90 minutes before lights on.
My room exhaust is now on a 15 minutes on, 45 minutes off schedule - used to be 15 minutes on, 60 minutes off. Lights on temps in the room now peak at 70 and canopy temps peak at 75. The canopy spends most of the time at 73, however. One interesting observation worth noting is that the plant gives off much less of an aroma at 73 vs 75 - very noticeably so. Lights off temps now dip to 64. The increase in exhaust frequency also means the RH will drop just a bit - I'm cool with that.

Not too much to mention on the feeding schedule - When I do my rez changes, here is my mix:
(Note: I do a thorough clean each and every time)

Starting with 0 PPM RO Water
0.285 EC Calmag (2 ml/g) - I'm going to see if I can get away with just a bit less than this
0.528 EC worth of Blue Plant Nutes (Micro, Bloom, Blue)
After about 12 hours following a rez change, she gobbles up quite a bit of that and I'm left with about 0.628 EC
I generally need to add about 3 gallons of water per day. I've been adding 2 ml of calmag with each gallon and ~ 1 ml micro and 3 ml bloom. Every other day or so I'll add some more seaweed and/or blue boost as I see fit. But generally speaking, she spends all of her time in the 0.628 EC range in between rez changes. Pretty crazy, right? Super low.

Enough jibber jabber...lets see some pics!

 

[Opie1971]

Awesome Diggity, just awesome!!

That first pic looks like some kinda frickin alien, an alien screaming for help, lol. I really got a kick outta that one, that's a pic that ya wanna keep man.
You've done a great job!!