Second Grow kc45 critical Mass and AMS

Hello all, never posted anything on here but have used this forum a lot to gain as much information as possible.. . .

Here I thought I'd start a grow journal as I have found so many others very useful.

Setup:
Tent 60x60x140 (I think can't remember height)
400w hps light
Tt100 inline fan with carbon filter 4"
Passive intake
Big desk fan suspended from rail
3ltr pots . . .I'm really not sure though and will probably transplant soon.

So the history of this operation broken down quickly

Done a grow about 4 years ago, fairly heath Robinson, mildy acceptable yields, due to circumstances couldn't continue, now in a situation that I can. So I started with the setup on the loft which was OK for the first three weeks but as soon as the plants started getting a little bigger I soon realised they were suffering from heat stress, so yesterday I dismantled everything and redeployed it all in my garage made a nice little setup in there.

So a few weeks ago I got my hands on 12 reg kc45 seeds, 1 ak47 auto fem (supposedly), 2 AMS fem seeds and one cbd critical mass fem seed.

The kc45's I have 5 of these and will weed out males as soon as they show preflower. Done both AMS and the ak47 and the critical. Looking to be taking clones off olthe critical and one of the AMS before they flower. These were all planted on the 16.07.15.

The "ak47 auto" I'm really not sure about, like a goon I fell for the "100 auto fem seeds" being sold on eBay so I thought I'd try one and see what they actually are.

I'll post some pics and try to do regular posts.

Any advice, comments completely welcome

The pics are not the best but I tried to show you the heat stress that they are now recovering from

Oooohh forgot to say. While they were in the loft they were being subjected to heats in excess of 35c (poor things), now I took a reading last night with door closed and it was 26/27c

just realised the photo's posted were thumbnails heres the full ones

Well its been nearly a week. . . .
Things are looking alot better since i have moved the whole setup!!
i have been Supercropping,topping & LSTing.
I have also started using Iguana Grow Juice and noticed the positive results (greener/lusher leaves) within 24 hours.

I am now currently facing a new problem. .
I start a new job in a weeks time which requires me to work away from monday to friday.
obviously my problem is watering. I have been doing alot of reading about self watering systems and being a plumber myself i dont think it would be too difficult to setup some kind of system but . . . i am completely broke at the moment and buying equipment to make this is not a viable option at the moment.

so this is what i have implented and going to try:

i have cut and placed a plastic sheet sheet over the top of the pot and under the plants to stop the soil drying out to quickly and all the pots stand in a large tray that i have filled with water and using to bottom water them . . . now i know this has its complications and can cause root rot and such like but what i am hoping is that after two days or so the tray will have dried out and then the soil will start to dry so that by the time i come back from work on a friday the roots will have had a chance to dry out and get a bit of oxygen round them and then i can start the process again...this is a suck it and see experiment thats why i have started a week before i go so i can make observations on how long it takes to dry and how much water they need. . .

heres some more pics of them.

Plan on vegging for another 3 weeks to a month before i flip them over . . . dont bank on the kc45's autoflowering by themselves as theyre not showing any signs of sex at all.

Hey drd, I like what you've done. Nice job!

Regarding your watering strategy, I bottom water a lot but I would never leave a pot of soil sitting in water for multiple days, your plants will hate it. Maybe if you put a bubbler in the water, but I'd recommend you pot them up and add a wick to the bottom of the new pots and suspend the pots over the water. You can then put a large amount of water below them and they will get O2 as well.

Just another option for you! Good luck and try to take your pics with your grow lights off!

Well Bugeye,
What an absolutely brilliant idea!!
Not sure im gonna have time to go get new pots this week, but i probably could have time to rig something up so they are sitting out of the water and make a wick out of an old cotton t-shirt for them all. . .
Looked at the wick idea and and thought i havent got anywhere to put a resevoir. . .

Doh!!

The answer was staring me in the face.. Thank you very much!! much appreciated.

Any more advice and comments always welcome.

Hello All,

Well it has been a few days. . . & much has changed!
Setup a tank and just waiting for a water timer and a 10 peice equal dripper.

I think the setup is going to work quite well while i am away once completed.
I will post some pics of what i have ordered.

i have also thinned the plants out a fair bit . . (controversial subject) but i felt it was more than necessary as most of the shoots/heads were blocked and covered from the light. In conjuction with thinning some foilage i have used stakes and tied all branches so the heads are all roughly at the same level and more exposed to lights.

I have flipped the lights to 12/12, I know i said i was going to wait a few more weeks but with being away and not being able to keep a close eye on height i felt it was the right time to do it.. perhaps in the future i will have more balls and carry on the veg for a bit longer.

I have also had to go and buy a new Carbon Filter as it was seriously starting to smell.
And this was when it was bone dry in there and the humidity was low . . just a crap filter.

Anyways heres some pics

Cheers Now

So. . .

The dripper and timer arrived today in the nick of time.
As you can see its all setup and now it is running well. Took a bit of time to get there because the dripper connection was poorly designed and after realising this i had to strip it down, remove the washer, use PTFE on the thread put it all back together and it works sweet as a nut. I have set the water timer to come on for 20mins every 24hrs, (Before i placed the drippers into the soil i sat with a measuring jug for 10 minutes and worked out roughly how much i would usually give them)

Filled the tank up with a soloution of tap water and Nutes.

Still no sign of sex on the plants, hopefully by time next weekend comes round they might start showing.

so apart from altering light height and filling the tank, theyre pretty self sufficient.

Would really reccomend this idea for if any people want to leave their plants to go on holiday, it really does appear to work well. . . but time will tell..

Anyway over and out for a week.

Well its been a week. . .

And much has chnaged!

Arrived back on friday,and they have STRETCHED!! but... not as i would have predicted!
I would have thought that the KC-45's would have stretched the most but i was wrong, The A.M.S had pretty much doubled in size, which was a shock as i thought these were mostly an indica strain.

None the less height is something that i cannot really accomodate in this enviroment, so, after some reading i have decided to use the "super-cropping" method to try and control the height and also help out the smaller branches that are struggling slightly to reach the same height.

The tank and automatic dripper system has worked fantastically well even if i do say so myself!!
The only slight problem i had was that one of the KC-45's had had a little too much too drink and was lookingf a little bit drunk (falling all over the place) so ive let her dry out over the last two days and she's looking alot better.

The main news of this post is that they have now shown their sex . . . and the results are as follows

KC-45: All 5 are Female
A.M.S: Both Female
Critical Mass: Female
AK-47: Male

The AK47 is gone and in the bin straight away. I cannot believe that out of 5 regular KC-45 seeds all of them were female . . Now that is a result!

Anyways, till next week

Heres some photo's

As always comments and advice is always welcome

Its been another week . .

When i arrived back i wasnt very happy to find that the critical mass and one of the A.M.S's were on deaths door, they had been starved of water so obviously those two drippers had stopped working for some reason.
I gave them some water and withing a couple of hours they were both standing tall and proud but, obviously quite a bit of damage has been done

To rectify this i have mad a simple single frame across the tent just above pot height for so the dripper tubes are all attatched to that and then runs off to each individual plant pot as equally as i could make them, the theory behind this is that if all tubes are at equal height and have equal drops then the water will flow equally. (water is very much like electricity, in that it will always follow the path of leat resistance)

I have also made two mini Co2 factories IE a bottle with sugar water and yeast with a tube out of top of lid pointing just above the canopy, you will be able to see in pics. For the lid i drilled a hole in just big enough to slide the tubing through i then put some insulation tape round the end to stop it pulling out, added a blob or so of silicone, popped the lid on the bottle for a second just so the silicone gets the right shape, left them to set and also put a little PTFE on bottle thread and voila! Air tight seal. refer to photo's.

The bud sites are taking shape nicely now shooting hairs out like a dog malting for summer! which is good too see.

The seem to be really enjoying the nute/water mix they are being fed everytime, still using Iguana grow juice Bloom, and also thrown a cap full of tomorite in too, got to be honest havent been to specific on measuring quantities, obviously read the labels and just making sure that im not over doing the nutes.

Anyway heres some more photo's . . until next week!!

so once again, another weekly update.

got back on friday to much nicer sight than the week previously, they all looked healthy!! Although one was just starting to wilt from being too thirsty i noticed once again that one of the drippers had stopped working!

I decided enough was enough and i needed to do something about it, so i went and bought a small maxi-jet pump, a digital timer and some hose.

just finished setting it all up and. . . Wow finally something working as i hoped it would.

Drippers seemed to be working a treat kept trying them by turning it off and turning it on several times, and now you can hear the air being forced out of the drippers and then water..

so am very happy and hopeful that when i next come back things will be looking good. Also got a mini PH test kit, its only a card and some PH liquid stuff but according to the yellow coulour of it we are roughly somewhere near 7.0 which is good.

heres some pics, till next week.

Another update: It's been a few weeks. . .

Okay so arrived back again this weekend after being away for two weeks this time, completely dreading the worst.
Apprehensivley i unzipped the tent, believeing they would all be but a flop on a stick! Too my amazement they looked very good! although the light was probably a bit low for some of them by the time i got back and a couple of leaves got a bit toasty.

I am worried though as a couple of the KC's are looking very very leafy and dont seem to be filling out on the buds.

Can anyone help me with this???

its strange cause one of the kc45 has a nugs bigger than a cumbrian sausage and the others dont really resemble weed too me. . . .unless its just how they look until they fill out..but in my limited experience i havent seen budding sights look quite as leafy as that.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Last week i also purchased some PH down and the PH level is roughly between 5.0 and 6.0
I have also purchased "Dense Bud Compactor" which has a nute ratio of 0-0-62 and have added a bit of that to the resevoir along with, Iguana Bloom and tomorite

I think its gonna be a fair few weeks before i can think about the flush.

Heres a few pics, just got a couple at the front out as its a ball ache to get them all out.

Good luck finishing them, looks like you'll have some nice buds to enjoy.

Be careful using the 0-0-62. Products that unbalanced are...tricky.

Really Bugeye? Ashamedly ive never done extensive reading on nutrients. . . .perhaps i should. what kind of problems do you think i am likely to run into?

daveravedave said:

Really Bugeye? Ashamedly ive never done extensive reading on nutrients. . . .perhaps i should. what kind of problems do you think i am likely to run into?

Click to expand...

I don't know how long you plan to use it or at what ppm, but anytime I see such a large NPK value I get concerned about lock out. The technical term is nutrient antagonism. Too much of one nutrient locking out other nutrients. Google mulders chart to see how these relationships work.

So with a product like 0-0-62, I would consider that a one time use product to correct or spike K, but not something I would use in a steady feed unless highly diluted. Just my opinion based on some mistakes I've made in the past.

Just had a quick glance going to spend a bit of time reading about it, but from what youve said and what i can quickly gather, that all nutrients have a role in allowing the other nutrients to be available to the plant. . . I would never have been aware of this without your advice so thank you Bugeye. probably saved me alot of hassle there.

Looking good bro

ljak1407 said:

Looking good bro

Click to expand...

Cheers Ljak!! will have a quick check on yours. How's your kc?