Indoor Iconoclastic plastic fantastic perpetual Shallow Water Culture

[The Iconoclast]

What is SWC?, click link in my sig.

I've tried the blogs but they don't work for me, it would make more sense to have a more freeform layout here. So that's what i'm doing. I currently have a Brooklyn Sunrise, a Purple Gorilla, and my latest Weirdo lime green Blackberry Kush. All the previous entries for these are in my blog journal which you can find via the shallow water culture link, in my sig, which also explains the particular set up I'm using. I'm not a fan of the roots going straight into a DWC, I prefer them going into a good size substrate first. I also do like a small net pot substrate, and then have the roots being sprayed with nutrient and separate from the pump. But I'm using the former.

I'm growing in a walk in wardrobe, and I've managed to section of a 3 foot by 5 foot growing space. I have two 96Elite Engines with a 185W HLG for each, plus a RapidLED Puck with a bit of extra blue, that's 100W. I cannot use and extractor fan, so I have a 200W dehumidifier running most of the time when I'm in flower, this raises the room temp so it's always pretty warm, usually I try to keep it under 30C. But I can keep the humidity down to 50% so that's pretty good.

It's not all bad news though because this is a walk in off my fairly large room, so the LEDs and the dehumidifier serve as heating for my room, also it's pretty tropical down my way too and the bright LED's plus the dehumidifier, keeps everything nice and mould free. I forgot, it's winter now, in the summer it is all bad news, that's until the harvest, then it's all good news again. To get decent temps and humidity in the summer, I'd have to run a 6kW air con, which is out of the equation, so I put up with the heat. But I don't find it that bad really.

Nutes: I'm currently midway through changing over from GHE to GP3 mainly because GHE have become hard to get where I am, no fancy stuff, although I am currently testing out GP3 Massive.

So I'm just doing a chronological continuous record here, feel free to comment or ask any questions. And we're off....

Starting with with my Weird little lime green D.P. Auto Blackberry Kush, she's a little less yellow and a little more green, although there is still an even mottled pattern over all the leaves. I had planned to not top this one, which is always difficult for me, but up a couple of hours ago, I really had talked myself into not topping. I have in the past removed at least one pair of the giant first leaves but this time by the time she was at the fifth node I realised because these leaves are so large and broad, that I can tuck them out of the way completely and they stay tucked in because even the newer leaves are strong enough to keep them in place. This is a new experience for me.

After seeing them all tucked away, I could see that the lower branches were coming through nicely and I could see all 8 branches from the top just by tucking.


Then it happened. A sudden urge to top, but I topped on day 18 at the fifth node, and the branches on that node were a good quarter inch long. I think I've done the right thing here but it's done now.

Coming up next an update on the Auto Brooklyn Sunrise who has come along really well in the past week.

 

[hope2grow]

Subbed lookin good m8

 

[The Iconoclast]

Hey, thanks h2g I'm excited again now that I've given up battling against the blog format! It's all getting very interesting now.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Brooklyn and Gorilla are in their final weeks, sharing a nutrient container and under the similar enough lighting, but have expressed themselves in completely opposite directions. Brooklyn Sunrise by a long way is the shortest most squat and chunky auto I've grown, and the other, Purple Gorilla, is my tallest yet at 35 inches, and it is the loosest fluffiest plant. This just goes to show how easy it can be to make a false correlation as to what made ones buds dense or fluffy, because they were treated the same.

But the Purple Gorilla is still covered in resin, and the pistils have barely started to change colour, so anything can happen. Also if I spread any of the P.G heads I can see where they don't get light they remain lime green, but all the undergrowth on the Brooklyn Sunrise has fully mature heads even though they get virtually no light at all. You can see how dark it really is under there and this is that same black area lit up. I'm not sure what to make of this, I have one Brooklyn bean left and if it comes out the same I may make it a regular in my grow room. The canopy is foreshortened but there is a ring around the central cola (which was part of a pair) and in between is lots of little heads that run along down the branches. I love the structure on this and is a pleasant change from dealing with monstrosities like Purple Gorilla, although I have purchased a 73 micron 60cm x 80cm silk screen to do a dry ice sift, so the loose heads will work in my favour.

A few Purple Gorilla shots to follow...

 

[DCLXVI]

Wow those are massive! rdwc setup?

EDIT: oh nevermind, I reread the first post. I see now.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Bit of an oopdate on Weirdo blackberry kush. She's still growing the same patterned lime green leaves. However there's lots of space and decent internode length which is like a holiday, I'm enjoying the wide open spaces. Spent all day going into remove a bunch of leaves from Purple Gorilla, and whatever leaves I could off Brooklyn Sunrise, who could be ready at any time. She's starting to get some purple hues.

Anyway back to Blackberry Kush, so because of her shape I decide that it might be fun to install a self supporting net. I could only get some wire mesh that was too fine so I cut out larger squares, that took a couple of hours about 500 cuts. Installed the net then I had to cut it out, pull out the sticks and drill new holes a couple of inches lower and reinstall. Glad I did. I don't have a clue how this one will grow it looks pretty sparse at the moment especially compared to past blackberrys I've had. Anyhoo. She was running on 2 parts micro 2 parts gro and 1 part bloom and so I dumped half of that over the weekend and replaced with water plus some extra bloom, for the moment. And mixed up a low ppm nute for the P.G and Brooklyn. Plus a couple of the latest Brooklyn Sunrise porn.

 

[The Iconoclast]

OK Brooklyn Sunrise is down, appears to be 160gm dry weight, which is a decent result from such a small and compact plant. Purple Gorilla is finally beginning to fill up with brown pistils, so perhaps there could be a chop coming up soon. Under the raggedy looking leaves there is some evil looking weed hiding in the shadows. I have earmarked this one for my new 73 micron mesh silk screen.

A new bean has broken surface today, a Fast Buds Lemon Pie Auto, she looks like another big plant which should be fine as the current lime green Auto Blackberry Kush is probably going to be pretty small judging by the looks of her now.

Here's some Brooklyn Sunrise during the chop...

 

[The Iconoclast]

And some shots of the Purple Gorilla. She big.

 

[DCLXVI]

Both impressive plants. Strong work all around!

 

[The Iconoclast]

I went a bit crazy with the lime green auto blackberry kush, split a couple of branches, and did some other light damage, so tried some repair work and basically left her alone to recover from my butchery. I'm just going to let her finish however she wants to, at the moment there are very few leaves, flowers are forming with some black and green but no red colouring yet. Also below is new bean on the block Fast Buds Auto Lemon Pie, she was planted during the recent total lunar eclipse and super moon combined, so there may be rainbow unicorns involved at a later date, hoping for a late August finish.


thx @DCLXVI