Indoor Hardon's First AFN Grow - Fast Buds West Coast OG GLR SCROG


I've been debating since the last feed what I should feed them this time. I was hoping that they would be good for one final grow feed but over the last few days, they have begun to show signs that they are ready for the bloom nutes. This has lead to another dilemma about continuing to feed grow nutes or not. This is my first time using the Plant Magic range and all their feeding schedules state that grow nutes should be stopped whenever bloom nutes are started. Further reading shows that their bloom nutes and bloom booster contains 'elements of nitrogen' which makes me think that continuing with grow along side these might not be the best idea... :confused1:

Looking good so far! I'm glad they survived the assassination attempt.

I had a quick look at their website and I think it works similar to the Hesi nute system I'm using. You have grow which contains 2.3-0.9-3.8 NPK and bloom that contains 2.4-1.1-6.3 and then you have the bloom booster that contains 0-5.3-3.6. The idea is to start with the grow and then when you flip the light(pre-flowers in autos probably) you immediately switch to bloom, which contains basically the same amount of N but a bit more PK. Then a few weeks into bloom you start adding in the bloom booster. I usually reduce the amount of bloom nutes when I start adding PK to avoid burning plus they don't need that much nitrogen in flower. Judging by the amount of PK in the bloom nutes you pretty much have to use the bloom booster as well. Notice how the bloom nutes contains less P and more K while the bloom booster is the other way around.
 
Looking good so far! I'm glad they survived the assassination attempt.

I had a quick look at their website and I think it works similar to the Hesi nute system I'm using. You have grow which contains 2.3-0.9-3.8 NPK and bloom that contains 2.4-1.1-6.3 and then you have the bloom booster that contains 0-5.3-3.6. The idea is to start with the grow and then when you flip the light(pre-flowers in autos probably) you immediately switch to bloom, which contains basically the same amount of N but a bit more PK. Then a few weeks into bloom you start adding in the bloom booster. I usually reduce the amount of bloom nutes when I start adding PK to avoid burning plus they don't need that much nitrogen in flower. Judging by the amount of PK in the bloom nutes you pretty much have to use the bloom booster as well. Notice how the bloom nutes contains less P and more K while the bloom booster is the other way around.

Dude you have just made me realise I have fucked up!!!

I'm using the Plant Magic Oldtimer range, not the original range whose NPK ratios I have been using as my base point. I've been working on the ratio for the original grow 2.3-0.9-3.8 and not the ratio for the oldtimer grow 5-3-3. That's why I started with the molasses so early - Because I thought a 2.3 nitrogen ratio wasn't that great.

Same story with the bloom nutes - Their original bloom has a ratio of 2.4-1.1-6.3 vs 3-5-2 for the oldtimer bloom. Those are very different ratios and the oldtimer bloom makes even less sense when you add the 0.05-5.3-3.6 booster into the mix :confused1: I am fucking raging I didn't pick up on this before now! It even has the NPK written on the front of the bottles and I've still managed to miss it until now.

What the actual fuck are Plant Magic doing with bloom nutes that contain more N than K??? What fucking sense does that even make??? Working on the NPK of their original range, I thought a 2.4-1.1-6.3 NPK for their bloom worked well alongside the 0.05-5.3-3.6 for their booster. But the actual 3-5-2 and 0.05-5.3-3.6 concerns me massively....

I've off to write an e-mail to Plant Magic asking them what the actual fuck and then on to e-bay to buy some original bloom!

Dude - Massive :slap: for making me realise this!!!

Cheers,
Hardon
 
What the actual fuck are Plant Magic doing with bloom nutes that contain more N than K??? What fucking sense does that even make??? Working on the NPK of their original range, I thought a 2.4-1.1-6.3 NPK for their bloom worked well alongside the 0.05-5.3-3.6 for their booster. But the actual 3-5-2 and 0.05-5.3-3.6 concerns me massively....

I've off to write an e-mail to Plant Magic asking them what the actual fuck and then on to e-bay to buy some original bloom!

Dude - Massive :slap: for making me realise this!!!

Cheers,
Hardon

I was surprised when I saw the numbers as well, as the Hesi bloom nutes I'm using are 3-2.6-3.6 plus a PK booster., I'm glad you figured it out though. It's like rubber duck debugging. When programmers get stuck with their code they explain what it's supposed to do and what it actually does to a rubberduck and the process of explaining it to someone/something else make you realize the mistake.

Oh, and thanks for the tap :biggrin:
 
Day Thirty Update

The news is not good! The forecast of winter arriving this weekend came true on Friday. It suddenly got bitter cold and the situation inside the tent suddenly became critical...

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:yoinks::yoinks::yoinks::yoinks::yoinks::yoinks::yoinks::yoinks::yoinks::yoinks:

That was the lights out temp on Friday. I spent time during lights out on Saturday and Sunday installing new heaters around the outside of the tent and testing them. I’ve got the temps back up to 15 degrees but this has taken over 800 watts worth of heaters. The new tube heater should arrive early this week and will hopefully buy me an extra degree. But considering it’s only mid November, I really don’t know what hope we have for December...

I used to grow indoors so winter was never a concern to me. I moved into the loft about four years ago and every year I’ve suffered the same temperature problems during winter. The unfortunate thing is that I can only harvest so much from the DR60 each time which forces me to grow all year round.

However I’ve been giving it a lot of thought recently and I need to accept that realistically, my growing window is from late March until late October. It is just too cold outside of this and having to run multiple heaters and still not manage to keep the temps right is too much. I could stretch this window to the beginning of March by running 24/0 for the first four weeks. This gives me a total growing window of 8 months (or 35 weeks) which with the right choice of strains would allow me to get 3 runs in.

Tme for some math :biggrin: My average harvest is in and around 8 oz a time (strain and numbers dependant) and I usually squeeze five runs in a year which is a total of around 40 oz a year. Dropping two runs would mean I would have to up my average harvest to nearly 14 ounces each time which isn’t possible for me. That number in a DR60 takes a lot of effort (my best is 11/12 oz) and I have a crazy job and can get called away for days at a time which means getting the perfect run has become a rarity.

As an example, my last run was 2 x Heavyweight 2 Vast 2 Fast (or vice versa) and I got called away with work for what ended up being 8 days, meaning they went without water for nearly 10 days during the stretch :yoinks: They didn’t have a green leaf left when I got back but I somehow still got two ounces from each. It wasn’t the greatest smoke I’ve ever had though...

But anyway, back on our original off topic topic :biggrin: With my revised growing window, it has become clear to me that my DR60 no longer serves my needs. Plus if I’m really honest, it is a ball ache to grow in sometimes. There is just no space and it suffers from the extremes of absolutely fucking everything (temps, air-flow, etc). I still love her to fucking pieces and have pulled some great harvests out of her but tent love aside, I need to up my production and to do that I need a bigger tent.

A DS90 (90x90x170) fits in my new loft and would allow me to comfortably run four plants a time. And with a conservative estimate of 3.5 oz a plant, that’s 14 oz a harvest or 42 oz a year. I reckon that is more than achievable under my 400w. But then I got thinking – What use is a 400w in a 3x3 space? I mean really? An area like that needs at least... 1,000w :lol:

So that’s the plan for the New Year – A new DS90 tent and a new lighting set-up! This doesn’t mean the DR60’s days are over. Oh no, I have big photoperiod plans for her involving a reunion with a certain Blue Widow... :thumbsup: But anyway, enough rambling Hardon! Back to the actual topic...

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I’m not sure if the cold is having an effect yet or not to be honest. The stretch has definitely started but I think I was expecting a little more... I dunno, aggression maybe? They are currently on a 4 day feeding schedule and I’m hoping to reduce this down to 3 days. They were nearly ready for a feed last night but I decided to give them an extra day so hopefully from here on...

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On the subject of nutes, big thanks again to Dirty Buster who made me realise (just in the nick of time!) that I had been working off the wrong set of NPK values. I was using the values from their original range instead of the oldtimer range I’m actually using. Plant Magic haven’t responded to my e-mail yet regarding the crappy PK ratio in the oldtimer Bloom but rather than just moving to a different bloom feed entirely (and risk losing any sort of synergistic effect), I’ve decided to continue using it but mixed equally with BioBizz bloom which has a higher PK ratio.

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I’ve also decided to ignore Plant Magic’s recommendation regarding starting the Bloom Booster on week 3 of flowering and instead started it today at double the recommended dose. They got fed with 5ml Bloom, 2ml Bloom Booster, 1ml Silicon and 1ml Cal-Mag. Just FYI – All these are per litre and each plant is taking 1.5 – 1.6 litres each feed.

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As you can see, the positioning is starting to take shape nicely. Unfortunately we lost one of the top shoots on #2 last night. It had grown down in a mad shape around the screen and I barely touched it and it snapped. The loss of it, the branch of #3 and one of the top shoots of #4 has left us with a few spaces to fill. The space at the sides will get filled with the strongest shoot and back right will be filled by one of the lower branches who is on a charge to the screen...

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Whilst we’re on the topic, this screen was not the one I wanted as it has 5cm holes. The actual screen I wanted had 10cm holes but the place stopped selling them (and yes I’m far too lazy to actually make one :biggrin:) I’ve decided to leave the front two rows empty as it’s here I have the tube heaters installed so I need to leave some space around them.

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OMAFG that is a lot of text! Sorry for the massive update, sometimes I start typing and just can’t seem to stop. Overall I’m happy with the progress so far despite losing three potential colas! It's the temps that are really concerning me... Hopefully by the next update, they’ll be down to a three day schedule and we’ll have the rest of the screen filled out.​

Thanks for dropping in!

Cheers,
Hardon
 
Looks great mate! I really like how evenly spaced out the tops are and how even the canopy is, nice work! :d5: They all look like solid tops too, I'm a bit jealous :biggrin:

How much of the colas do you usually have above the screen? I usually aim for 15-20cm, any more and the lower part usually doesn't develop more than some popcorn but I guess it depends on the density as well.
 
For the temperature issue, what is the temp at lights on? Would it be possible to place the heater close to the tent inlet? I just think if you can keep the temperature up with 400W inside it should be possible to reach reasonable temps with 800W outside given that a lot of that is diverted directly in to the tent.
 
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