A Hempy Adventure in Soilponics

Been a member here for over 4yrs, and here’s my 1st grow journal. I don't mind questions or comments. Let’s get started.

My room is a 4’x11’ section of my garage with 2 walls adjacent to the living area of the house one to the garage the last is an exterior wall.
Flower area is 4’x4’. Veg box is a whapping 6sf of space (19”x 50”) with 35” of headroom. I use the top as my work bench.

Lighting:

Veg – A turbo charged 4 bulb 32W T8 shop light 128 total watts.

Flower – Large Control Wizard hood with 3 bulbs. Two 400W CMH, and a 1000W hps between them (this will be the first time I’ve run the 1k)
Hood is vented during summer with 4” vortex fan. Winter the glass is removed and fan turned off to use light for heat.

Ventilation:

Intake from outside, exhaust straight to outdoors again.
Intake through a 500 cfm rated hepa filter hung in the garage, with an additional eco 6” inline fan (cheap noisy piece of junk) in room discharges on hood.
Exhaust is 6” vortex fan drawing through a 50 lb carbon filter discharging outside.


Food:

Osmocote Plus 15-9-12 & Osmocote 14-14-14

Supplements:
Floralicious Plus
Cal / Mag
PH down

Growing Method:

Soilponics – Vegging in perlite diluted Happy Frog soil. Transplanted into hempy bucket for flower.


The strain I’m growing this round, is a home cross, my 18th gen Maui Wowie clone (which I no longer have) and a purple male Bay-11 straight from breeder pack. I’m going to call it Maui Bay. This is a test run just to see if it’s worth growing.


Seeds were planted in solo cup 8/3/14 this is when I start counting days. No soaking seeds no paper towels, just a lite scuffing and planted in specially prepped saturated soil cup at 78 degrees.

scuff box


10 days after planting


10 days later day 20




During the cup phase just watering with straight RO water ph around 7

Have to admit I was rather lazy with this veg period, and I left the plants in the cup for 28 days which is a wk more than usual. Most likely cost me some size.

9/1/14 Transplant solo cup to a 2qt container of Happy frog cut with 30% perlite and amended with 1 tbsp of Osmocote Plus. Which is much more than enough food to veg in this size container to fully root bound, and will continue to feed the central root ball to near the end of flower.




After this transplant I start to pay attention a bit more.

Feed water at this point is a 50/50 mix of tap (420ppm) and RO (I will continue this mix of tap & RO for the rest of the grow)

I’m adding 1ml/gal cal-mag (because my tap has no cal) & 8 drops/ gal Floralicious Plus then adjusting ph to around 6.5 to 6.8. (about 1 ml/gal ph down). Watering every 4 to 5 days.

The Osmocote plus feeds at whatever rate the plant wants to consume, and won’t burn the plants. I don’t know how it does it, but it makes my life easier.

Mid September I topped all 5 one time just above node 4, kept the 2 branches of node 3 and cut off the rest.

I should mention that the previous 2 indoor grows I fought Powdery Mildew. (4yrs of previous growing in this room without ever seeing PM) Even with the room shut down for over 2 months between these grows during the height of summer. It came back the only common denominator is a Lemon Kush from Female Seeds (freebie from Altitude) I think the PM came with the seed, I know this isn’t possible but I still believe it. Because of this, I sprayed these plants once a wk after transplanting into 2qt pots with “Fertilome Fruit Tree Spray” ** http://www.fertilome.com/product.aspx?pid=56269201-b7bd-4e66-a973-c0c5531f8ff8**

Transplant to hempy time 10/7/14

The medium is a mix this round. It’s recycled perlite, in the rez and half way up the soil core (I ran out at this point). From there on up it’s my mixed coco. If you want to know what my mixed coco is go Here


Going into 2gal buckets, filled to about ¾” above the drain hole, then from here on up I layered in 4 tbsp’s Osmocote and medium to the top.

Osmocote mix for this run – 1 1/3 tbsp of Osmocote Plus (OC+) & 2 2/3 tbsp OC 14-14-14, cost is under $0.50 per bucket. And will easily finish these plants.

Plants moved from veg box into flower area under the dual 400W CMH

Water is altered because I’m now going from a soil grow to a hydro grow.

With the added coco I bump up the cal/mag from 1 ml/gal to 4 ml/gal. Still adding 8 drops/ gal Floralicious Plus then adjusting ph to around 5.8 to 6.2. And I’ll be watering whenever the bucket feels dry when lifted.

After watering at transplant it took 4 days to dry out the buckets, and the roots are now in the rez. After watering I sprayed for PM with “Spectracide Immunox”
http://www.spectracide.com/Solution-Center/Lawn-Disease-and-Fungus/Powdery-Mildew.aspx

This has the same active ingredient as Eagle 20 and you don’t have to buy enough to fill a 750 gal tractor towed sprayer. I wanted to spray before I had any flower production.

7/12/14 flipped lights to 11.5/12.5 I’ve found that starting less than 12/12 helps the sativa dominate strains that I mainly grow get going right off the bat. Plants are small but looking for a quick turnaround just to see if its worth growing again.


14-10-12


14-10-16


Sexing is done out of the 5 – 2 girls and 3 boys. Each of the girls are different phenos. Just wish I had the room to do a larger sampling when trying out new strains, to maybe see all possible expressions of the new cross, then try and isolate the one I like best.

14-10-23

Quick story been watering every 3 days +/- the larger pheno drinks faster, and is building larger bud, and in the 4th wk starts to show a little purp. Stretch was finished by the end of wk 3.


10-31 Day 19

11-8 Day 27

On 11/10/14 I switched my lighting from 2 400W CMH to 1k HPS and new adventure for me. Room temps changed from 75 to 85

My first ever HPS photos

11-11 Day 30

On 11/16/14 added one 400W CMH back in so now running 1.4K room temp 88. I just had to add some spectrum to this yellow light. Between the last post and this each got one feeding with ¼ tsp Cha-Ching PK boost. If they little to no tip burn I’ll add more every 2nd or 3rd watering. Watering every 2.5 days now.
The smaller phenol is now showing some purp also. Now I wish I had cloned that Bay-11 Male.

Took these photos under the cmh only.

11-16 Day 35

Had an incident last night. In my insomniac fashion I was up at 2am and noticed that my light was off, and it just happened, the bulbs still had a glow. I thought there a minor power drop out which happens several times a yr here. I've got a power timer delay box so if the power goes out it starts a 15 min delay timer once it sees power again, to eliminate hot starts on momentary power interruptions. So I had a smoke and the lights were back on. Awake again at 4 checked and the lights were out, I played with the cord to timer connection and it was really hot and the light started to fire, I then pushed the test button on the power interruption timer and it tripped. Pulled the power strip cord end out of the timer and the other side of the cord end was blacken, melted a bit. Really glad I caught it and didn't burn the house down. Replaced with new power strip today. Still gonna keep an eye on things tonight.

Girls are fading quicker than they should be, I have a feeling that with the 1k they are working harder than previous grows, and have eaten up the OC, so last nights feeding instead of more PK I added a 1/4 tsp of Jacks Classic 20-20-20 to add some "N". We'll see.

great journal Watts....glad you caught the electrical issue before it became a nightmare

your plants are looking very healthy...as they also do

Damn mate, some beautiful girls you got there! May have to try and get some of that osmocote plus, looks the goods as your girls are healthy as! Top stuff mate

ISK said:

great journal Watts....glad you caught the electrical issue before it became a nightmare

your plants are looking very healthy...as they also do

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Thanks ISK, I checked everything at least 8 times during the night, I'll have to get a nap in later today.

WattSaver said:

Thanks ISK, I checked everything at least 8 times during the night, I'll have to get a nap in later today.

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it a good lesson for all of us....got to keep a close eye on all electrical equipment and feel for abnormal heat...and a visual check is a good idea as well.

power strips and extension cords are often a lower gauge than your household wiring, thus they are the first thing to show the stress...I use a 14 AWG power strip for my HPS light

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I just finished my first hempy grow and I loved it. I will give your method a go next run!
I already feel almost lazy for using a hempy bucket, I think I will feel guilty trying your method. I am OCD about checking up on and fussing with my plants. This method may drive me to drink!

halfbubbleoff said:

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I just finished my first hempy grow and I loved it. I will give your method a go next run!
I already feel almost lazy for using a hempy bucket, I think I will feel guilty trying your method. I am OCD about checking up on and fussing with my plants. This method may drive me to drink!

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Your more than welcome. And as you have already found out the bucket is the key to a simple grow.

I just got back from a nice 5 day Thanksgiving break. A friend of the wife watered while we were gone. Things still look really good except for the larger girl, her buds are so big I found them sagging nearly to the floor. I wired them up so the stalks won't have to support them. I've got 7wks in the books now and there are less than 10% clear resin heads. They will most likely be ready to chop next weekend.

Day 49 flash photos after lights off. They are showing their age, and the OC is running out. More and more purple keeps showing up. I sure hope it smokes as good as it looks.



(If you want to view full size, once open right click and click on view image)

Inspirational. Just started my first Hempy grow w/ 3:1 coco/perlite and OC+.... seems easy enough!

Budder Fingers said:

Inspirational. Just started my first Hempy grow w/ 3:1 coco/perlite and OC+.... seems easy enough!

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It is real easy, just keep the ph in range. And please keep me posted on how your grow progresses.