Wow. 132 notifications. I should go on vacation more often. Big chunk of that is PMs it looks like. It makes a grower feel good to know his peers don't mind coming by and checking out his work. Anyways, camping was a blast, and was totally what I needed. I'll post some pictures when I get a chance to go through them all.
My neighbor did an awesome job feeding the ladies whilst I was away. She said the instructions I left for her made things super easy, so, I thought I would share what I'm up to. I'm sort of an overwaterer, and since I can't afford a bunch of Blumat Tensiometers (a small meter w/ display that shows the pressure levels in the soil in mBar - combined with a few items, I could essentially have a central wireless monitoring system for the soil pots - gauge my lv, lux, air temp, soil temp, soil humidity) I just went with something a bit simpler.
First thing I did, was run a water depravation test. I picked NL5 x Haze as a subject. I watered until I saw some runoff, weighed the pot, recorded the time, then watched for signs of dehydration. When I saw that the lowest set of fan leaves was starting to droop (this took about 98 hours), I recorded the time, watered, misted with ph'd, superthrive treated water, waited 20 mins, and weighed again. After repeating the process 3 times, the average weight lost was about 2 - 2 1/2 pounds (or about 30oz. of water). That told me that I should use
at least 30 oz. every watering (every 98 hours - 4 days). So, since all the environmental variables in the cab are all stable (temps, ventilation, humidity, soil type etc) if I watered Monday @ 8am, I know that, by Friday @ 6am, my girls would need their next watering. Of course, the numbers will be a bit different for varying strains, and will increase as flowering progesses, but I have a good baseline. And, no more soggy pots.
I've been keeping the ambient in the flower tent really cool lately. It's about a 10°+ difference under the lamp, so for the canopy to stay at 75°, 65-66° is where I've been hovering. I need to get some more power strips. Things are getting a little sketchy. I've also been using the AC to run some cooler air through the air pump. Reservoir temps have been staying at a constant 61.5°F. Very cool.
Decided to wait on building the extra partition in the veg cab dedicated to flowering autos. At least until next run. Since I'm currently using the flower tent to veg the WW x BB in the bubbler under the 600w MH on 20/4, I figured, why not just run another 600w HPS at 20/4 alongside the other? When I flip the photos, I'll flip the whole tent to 12/12. By the time this happens, autos should only have about 1-2 weeks left on them max, and I don't mind running them 12/12 for the last week or so up to harvest. That would make their lifespan look something like this:
1 week - 24/0 150w CFL to root
3 weeks - 20/4 T5HO's root/veg transition
5-6 weeks - 20/4 600w Full Spectrum HPS
1-2 week - 12/12 600w Full Sprectrum HPS
(Barely any stress at all. One transplant from solo to 3gal, and only one pruning/training session)
Good to be back. Hope you guys had a killer weekend. I did.
- Parasite