LUCAS FORMULA - Hydroponic Grow Journal

[GreenThumbSucker]

This will be my first true grow journal.

I have been growing off and on since the 1980s, but didn't begin toying with Hydroponics until last fall. I have successfully grown three crops hydroponically. I believe that I have the basics down enough to do a journal that you and I can learn from.

Here are some factoids for my grow:

• I will be growing 'up to' 15 plants this grow (more on this later.)
• I will be using a commercially made, 'Ebb and Grow,' ebb and flow system
• My room is 4'x10' completely papered by Mylar
• I will be using 3 x 1000 watt sodium lamps for flowering
• I will use the LUCAS FORMULA for flowering, but not for the vegetative stage
• I am growing in a half finished basement which gets cold in cool weather
• I am using tap water, last time I checked it, was 23 PPM right out of the tap
• I am a legal Medical grower

Short term do list:

1. Clean up room/equipment from last grow
2. Rebuild room
3. acquire clones

As it sits now, my grow room is a train wreck. I finished my last grow in mid July and haven't done much in the way of cleaning up the mess.

Last night I took the old hydroton from the previous grow and cleaned it out. It still had the roots (half rotten) from last July mixed in it. I carefully pulled out the root mass and banged it against the sides of a five gallon bucket to knock loose the hydroton. As it fell into the bucket, I picked out as much root as could. I then put a screen over the top of the five gallon bucket and put a hose into the hydroton and let it run for about half an hour. Whatever is left of the roots rise to the top and stick to the screen. Doing this gets about 99% of the leftover root bits out of the hydroton.

I put the hydroton back into the grow buckets and let them dry overnight. This morning I filled a five gallon pail with three gallons of water and put 7 tablespoons of 35% H2O2 in. I dipped each bucket this solution 5 or 6 times to kill any virus', mould, or bacteria that are still lurking.

Last crop I grew 12 plants and last night it took me about 3 hours to clean all that hydroton. This will be the second time I've reused this same batch of hydroton.

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

This morning I started to rebuild the room. It isn't actually a 'rebuild' but I'm extending it. The previous grow room was 8 x 4 feet. I am extending it to 10 x 4 feet. I am also redoing the plastic on the door where I enter the room so that light does not escape when I enter the room.

On the previous grow the controller bucket was in the room with the plants. This time I will have it outside the room so it isn't in the way. The problem I had with the controller in the room with the plants is when they got big, it made it hard to access the timer and I would accidentally bump the timer and screw up the settings without realizing it.

I had planned to begin the actual grow last Monday August 31st, but the dispensary where I get my medical cuttings hired some bozo as a gardener and he killed half of the mothers. He 'forgot' to turn the exhaust fan back on after doing some work in the grow-room. Imagine a room with 200 4 foot tall mother plants, needless to say it had at least 20 1000 watt halides running in it, very hot and a very stupid mistake. This is sad because they had 186 different strains to choose from. I had pre-ordered 11 white widows and four blackberry # 2 cuttings three weeks prior, but because of the idiot wrecking everything they gave them out to needy growers. I called them back two days ago and they took about 1000 cutting from forty different strains on Monday. They believe they will be rooted by next Wednesday and because I had a pre-order, they will still honour it and give me first dibs. They cannot guarantee what strain I get, though. We will see.

In the meantime I have a bit more work to do. Pictures coming soon.

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

Hmmmmmm, This is the mess from my last crop.

The reservoir barrel needs a little cleaning, you think?
Thank god for Hydrogen Peroxide!!
I wont be putting the ebb and grow together until I know exactly how many cuttings Im getting. It came with 12 units so I splurged and bought an expansion kit which adds six more buckets.

I will put my new lamp together tonight, with my new parabolic hood. Last crop I had 12 plants with two 1000 watt sodium bulbs and some of the perimeter plants were smaller. 3k watts in 40 ft sq should give the kick I need! 75 watts per square foot..

 

[jcdws602]

• I am using tap water, last time I checked it, was 23 PPM right out of the tap

Damn I wish my tap was that clean....my tap is 740 ppm......sucks about the clones....I f n hate cleaning hydroton..............Check in later for more updates

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

• I am using tap water, last time I checked it, was 23 PPM right out of the tap

Damn I wish my tap was that clean....my tap is 740 ppm......sucks about the clones....I f n hate cleaning hydroton..............Check in later for more updates

Wow, 740 ppm. That is just about nuts. Yeah, I hate cleaning hydroton too but I finally got it all done.

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

OK, update time. The clones from my medical dispensary finally rooted so I went and picked some up. All the ones they had looked really sad with a few exceptions.

No matter, I was the first in line so I got first pick of the best ones. I got six skunk #11, five AK47 and four Dynamite.

15 total plants in a 5 x 10 room. Should be interesting.

They are very small cuttings BUT they all have nice perky little root systems on them. I will idle them for a week at about 300 ppm, including B1 and some rooting stuff that came with my ebb and grow, "Root 66".

I expect to see a few roots coming out of the bottoms of the pots in a week or ten days, as soon as I see roots on most of them, I will crank the PPM up to 500, then up 100 every day til it is at 800 and leave it there til they are ready to flower.

I am lazy so I am using the Technaflora stuff that came along with the ebb and grow for vegetative. I Dont feel like going out to the grow store for some of the 'Grow' formula. When I start to flower I will switch to the Lucas Formula.

I will take some pictures tonight or tomorrow.

Peace!

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

Ok, I have some pictures finally. I have had the cuttings idling at about 250 ppm for the last five days. They are getting some small but new growth on all but one, and they are looking healthier than when I first got them.

I changed out the reservoir yesterday, day four, and they seem to like it. I pulled back some of the hydroton on a few plants and I can see that the roots are spreading nicely out of the rockwool. I might start cranking up the nutes a little earlier than I was expecting to. Maybe in a couple of days. Good news for me given I started everything two weeks later than planned.

I am flooding twice a day, once when the light goes on and once 12 hours later. The lights are on an 18/6 schedule right now.

PPM: 250
PH: 5.7
Room temp: 78F
Water temp: 68

I have all 15 plants under a 1000 watt MH. I am going to wire up for the third lamp next week, too lazy to do it this week. What can I say

There will be 3k of HPS. Two of the HPS have the best bulb that the hydro store sells, and the third one has a cheap assed sylvania bulb. I am saving up for another good HPS bulb but the cheap one will work until then. I have a nice new parabolic reflector for my newest lamp. I also put up fresh mylar on the walls.

For this grow there will be looooots of light!!

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

The PH has been climbing obscenely fast the last few days, going from 5.5 to 6.5 in 24 hours. I started checking every six hours or so knocking it back down.

I added some hydrogen peroxide yesterday and this morning when I checked the vitals, the PH had settled down and was at 5.6. Must have had some sort of pathogen or fungus in the system. Added more H2O2 this morning, I will check it again tonight. I will add a tablespoon every day until I change out the solution next weekend. That should kill whatever the hell was driving the PH up.

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

My PH has stabilized. I lifted a few of my pots up and low and behold, roots coming from every one I checked:

Time to crank up the nutes.

I cranked them to about 550

PPM: 550
PH: 5.7
Room Temp: 74
Water Temp: 68

I expect them to take off within the next couple days

Once they take off I will start notching the PPM up until it is at 800 PPM then keep it there

Woohoo, exactly one week from retards to roots

Questions?? Comments??

 

[doniawon]

what do you think you will yield??

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

what do you think you will yield??

On my last grow I did 12 plants. Five of them turned out to be so infested with bananas (male flowers) at about half way through flowering that I pulled them from the room.

The remaining seven plants produced 2 lbs + 16 grams. This was with two 1000 watt HPS. This time Im growing 15 plants with three 1000 watt HPS so I expect a bit more per plant.

Four pounds is a pretty safe bet. I am hoping to get closer to six pounds. Anything over four pounds is a bonus, in my view.

 

[doniawon]

damn 5 pounds with 15 plants and 3 g's of light.. how long you vegging?? these plants are gonna be huge

 

[Smokiethebear]

Ive been looking for someone useing a ebb and grow....ill be watching

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

damn 5 pounds with 15 plants and 3 g's of light.. how long you vegging?? these plants are gonna be huge

I will veg for about three more weeks, less if need be. I will get them about 24 inches tall then flower them.

Today I changed my flood schedule. I had been flooding twice a day while they spread their roots. Once at 6 AM when the lights come on and once at 6 PM. The lights go off at midnight. Because they now have spread their roots, I programmed the ebb and grow to flood them three times a day. Once at six AM, once at noon and once at six PM. They have started showing new growth since I turned up the nutes yesterday.

I still have one plant that is basically retarded. The other 14 are all looking good and are about evenly sized.

 

[doniawon]

i use ebb and gro with the lucas formula also, its a great system.
cant wait to see you trees...

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

Time for some new pictures.

The buckets have been showing roots out the bottom for a couple days and I have turned the PPM up to 600ish. The plants have started growing. I have one halide light and I dont want to add a sodium right now so I made some panels with Mylar on them and boxed everything in. This way I dont waste any light and the plants on the perimeter get lots of reflected light.

Tomorrow I change the solution.

PPM 600
PH 5.7
Temp 78
Solution temp 68

 

[MonsterRobot]

Looking good! How do you cool your lights? I run 3 1000w in my flower room which is a DR240 (8'x8') and it gets so hot that I have to use AC... It is getting colder outside now so hopefully that will change and I can ditch the AC but we will see...

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

Looking good! How do you cool your lights? I run 3 1000w in my flower room which is a DR240 (8'x8') and it gets so hot that I have to use AC... It is getting colder outside now so hopefully that will change and I can ditch the AC but we will see...

That is a very good question. I am growing in an unheated basement and I draw air from a room that gets very cold. Last winter I ran a couple of crops with 2k of sodium with no heat problems at all. This summer I ran two lamps and did run into issues.

I probabally wont add the third HPS until about the 2nd week of flowering which is about a month from now. By then my basement will be very cold. If I have heat problems then I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

I have dealt with problems like that by asking here on the forum until I find an answer that works out. Pretty much everything I have learned about Hydroponics is from this and cannabisculture.com

Early next year I will get vented hoods for all of my lamps. That will eliminate that problem and allow me to start messing with CO2.

 

[MonsterRobot]

Nice. I run cool tubes and that takes a lot of the heat away, but it still gets hot in that tent... I am in the process of making a bigger flowering room that will include CO2... pretty stoked about that but I have to do some more research first... While running CO2 you can have higher temps so I probably won't need the AC anymore once that happens...

 

[aliciasu]

im doin 2 clones of blue cheese 2 puere gold and 2 blue venom(blueberryxwhite widow) in 5x4x8 room im using one 1000 watt hps for flowerin and i find out tha spraying the plant whit mineral water makes the temperature go down up to ten degrees