Early Summer Hydro Grow

Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Getting ready to grow a plant from seed using a home-made hydro tub and converted cabinet -> grow closet.

Need to finish this by early July, because of vacation plans.

Today I will sprout a seed. Strain is Tahoe OG.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Sprout just popped up through the coco plug. 1 cm root sticking out the bottom of the plug. Will feed only water for the next 10 days or so.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Achhhhh!!! While handling the little sprout, I accidentally kinked its delicate stem and killed the little bugger. So yesterday I placed 2 more seeds in sprouting plugs. Happy 420!!!
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Bigz2277 said:
tweezers work well if you have steady hands.
Click to expand...
I just wasn't watching what I was doing. Dumb! This time I got both plugs all ready in their pots before the have sprouts come out. Live and learn. A $20 seedling bites the dust.

(Thanks for reminding me to buy a pair of tweezers, too, Mr Bigz. Hey, where did your name come from? Just curious.)
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
One trick that I'm trying is to sprout seeds in a tub of water with an ultrasonic fogger inside. If you can picture a foot-soaking tub of water with a lid on top that has two 3" holes cut in it for hanging net pots inside. I filled it with RO water almost up to the bottom of the net pots. Also in the bottom of the res sits an ultrasonic fogger.

The fogger has 2 benefits:

  1. It warms up the res. This is good, because seeds like to germinate in a warm environment (around 70-90° F).
  2. It keeps the starter plug moist, but not soaking wet.

I tried this last time and it worked pretty well. This time I noticed that the tub was too warm, so I put the fogger on a timer, 30 min on/30 min off. Let's see how well this works (...or doesn't).
 
Bigz2277

Bigz2277

Well-Known Member
Weed B. Grown said:
I just wasn't watching what I was doing. Dumb! This time I got both plugs all ready in their pots before the have sprouts come out. Live and learn. A $20 seedling bites the dust.

(Thanks for reminding me to buy a pair of tweezers, too, Mr Bigz. Hey, where did your name come from? Just curious.)
Click to expand...
Been a pretty active computer gamer over the past 5-6 years and Bigz was always my characters name or The account name was bigz2277. Bigz was a nickname that was given to me when i used to skateboard (i was a pretty big kid), and it just kind of stuck. Bigz or Big blue is what they called me. Mostly blizzard games.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Well, the fogger didn't work out as I'd hoped... It made the starter plug too soaking wet and also made it too warm. After tinkering with it, gave up and just unplugged the fogger.

Anyway, 1 or my 2 seeds sprouted on Tuesday (the 24th). Checked my calendar and figure out that I can only veg this plant for 2 weeks from now. (Got plans in July.) That will give me 9 full weeks (63 days) to flower it.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Transplanted the starting plug with seedling into my hydro tub last night. Still very tiny. Growing its first pair of leaves now. 1/4 strength nutes and then adjusted pH to around 5.86. Tap root is dangling down into the res water already.

Planning to veg for a little more than 1 week (due to time constraints) and start 12/12 on May 9th.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Started the flower phase today. Changed the light timer to a 12 on/12 off schedule. Also replaced the cool lights with warm T5 lights. (Using a bank of 8 2' long T5 HO tubes.) Plant is growing fast, but only about 3-4" wide. So it won't be the biggest yielder, but I need to harvest in about 2 months from now.

Also sprayed the plant with a Neem Oil solution that I bought from Wal Mart. One leaf had a white powdery coating on it. If it's some kind of mold or fungus, the Neem Oil should take care of it.

pH was way down today, so adjusted it up to around 5.7-5.8 pH.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Changed water today with Advanced Nutrients Sensi Bloom A & B, plus B-52 vitamin B supplement. Everything half strength.

There were dark chunks of sediment in the res. Not sure whether it was settled out from the nutes or it was from metal that dissolved off the ultrasonic fogger. Saw some chunks of corrosion on it. Taped over the corrosion with aluminum tape.

Plant grew a lot since last time I looked at it a few days ago. First set of leaves is dark and looking a little shriveled. Not dry yet, but they don't look healthy. New leaves are looking great, though. Some small side branches are growing off the branches connected to the first set of leaves.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
Removed the ultrasonic fogger. The silver coating and other metals were coming off and going into the res water. Everything seems to be working fine just doing a simple DWC without it.

ppm: ... 619
pH: ... 5.81
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
05-15:

I saw some dark chunks of something in my res and all over my roots. My roots were brown with a cruddy coating, so I thought it could be root rot. Squirted the crud off with hydrogen peroxide (3%). Discovered that the crud was just dirt & coco that fell into the res from the starter plug, which was torn open at the bottom.

Nutes:
  • AN Sensi Bloom A & B
  • AN Big Bud
pH: ... 5.80 (without adjustment!)
ppm: ... 485

05-16:

pH: ... 5.95 (no adjustment)
ppm: ... 495

Plant is looking healthier. (Yesterday the leaves got wet and were drooping after the water change.) All but the lowest leaves touching the lid have sprung back to life. Just those lower leaves have some damage from the water.
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
To my horror, when I looked in on my plant today the leaves had all drooped straight down. Looked under the lid at the roots and they were all covered with some light brown muck. Looks like the pictures of root rot that I've seen. So I put some H2O2 in a squirt bottle and sprayed off all of the much that I could. Then replaced 2.5 liters of the res water with H2O2 (a little more than 1/8.)

Roots look much better now. They're floating freely in the water again and all of the little roots are separated from each other (no longer stuck together). I hope that tomorrow the leaves will look a little better. When hydro goes bad, it goes bad FAST.

Also lowered pH & ppm:

pH: ... 5.60 (was 6.10)
ppm: ... 410 (was 510)
 
Weed B. Grown

Weed B. Grown

Member
My wife discovered this morning that the plant raised most of its big leaves up overnight! Awesome recovery! It looked like a certain loss for a couple of days. Roots are looking good.
 
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