Indoor Kyote's 2021 Adventures in Grow Land Indoor & Outdoor

[Olderfart]

Actually it's blue sky and 4 here right now.. buts supposed to get down to -15 later in the week ... Come on spring!!

There are metal racks used for cooling off baked goods or to sit a hot pan on that work as well, yet amazon was out of stock on what i wanted. So i drilled out the saucers - I just looked and this is what I will get - cooking rack

All the way from China.

How goes the battle down there @Kyote. All well here, closing in on initial chopping on the current grow. Patience is hard at this point...

Stay warm and safe down there.

 

[Kyote]

All the way from China.

How goes the battle down there @Kyote. All well here, closing in on initial chopping on the current grow. Patience is hard at this point...

Stay warm and safe down there.

Well i looked a bit more and found some rectangle ones, 3 for 20 bucks that are already in country so i picked those up. And yep, got wood chopped and the long johns on the ready. No where near as cold as you or Rivetgrrl up in Alberta. I'll happily take a few days of what we will get.

I hear ya, those last couple weeks are like watching paint dry

 

[Olderfart]

FN I have no clue. I do presoak the medium thoroughly, bring the bags into the tent for a week prior to using so the medium can warm up. And they were pretty damp when i planted. And yes, it has the myco in it. If the two I just planted in new medium don't take off, I will switch to Sunshine #4 or something similar. I did use less perlite in the pots i just filled, mainly because they are only 2 gallon pots.

I have to either get something going before the end of the month as I'll need the tent in May to get outside plants going... so there is a time crunch happening as well. I just hope something takes off soon.

I am none too pleased with SS#4 this grow. Among other issues, it may contain too much dolomite lime and keeps pH a tad too high. Also, there is not enough perlite in it for my tastes, and all of what there is in it is small size. I would not use it again absent some good information from successful grows. When I was digging around on line I ran into more than one complaint about batches of the stuff being bad for one reason or another.

I have been considering trying Dr. Bruce Bugbee's mix, or an adjustment of it. At least by starting with straight peat, one would know what the heck is in there, and it seems that using vermiculite instead of perlite has advantages. If I go that way, I think I will have to adjust the lime and gypsum amendments to reflect my melted snow water. I asked about this on another thread and got zero comment.

Or, I may just head back to coco.

If you do go with SS#4, you need to know and maybe already know, that although similar to ProMix HP, it, unlike Promix, does not have an intial nute charge, so you need to keep that in mind with your feed sched. I am pretty sure that the initial mischief with my current grow was actually starvation, but when I corrected, I made nutes too high, and moved them directly into lockout. The two plants doing reasonably well still are younger, and I managed to get them sorted earlier. If they had been the same age as the two locked out plants, I would have had four messes instead of just two out of four.

Anyway, good luck with the new girls, I hope they do well for you.

 

[Kyote]

I am none too pleased with SS#4 this grow. Among other issues, it may contain too much dolomite lime and keeps pH a tad too high. Also, there is not enough perlite in it for my tastes, and all of what there is in it is small size. I would not use it again absent some good information from successful grows. When I was digging around on line I ran into more than one complaint about batches of the stuff being bad for one reason or another.

I have been considering trying Dr. Bruce Bugbee's mix, or an adjustment of it. At least by starting with straight peat, one would know what the heck is in there, and it seems that using vermiculite instead of perlite has advantages. If I go that way, I think I will have to adjust the lime and gypsum amendments to reflect my melted snow water. I asked about this on another thread and got zero comment.

Or, I may just head back to coco.

If you do go with SS#4, you need to know and maybe already know, that although similar to ProMix HP, it, unlike Promix, does not have an intial nute charge, so you need to keep that in mind with your feed sched. I am pretty sure that the initial mischief with my current grow was actually starvation, but when I corrected, I made nutes too high, and moved them directly into lockout. The two plants doing reasonably well still are younger, and I managed to get them sorted earlier. If they had been the same age as the two locked out plants, I would have had four messes instead of just two out of four.

Anyway, good luck with the new girls, I hope they do well for you.

I watched a video a professor in Colorado made about grow medium, and he suggested using vermiculite as when it breaks down, it adds nutrients to the medium. I'm not sure what I will use this spring/summer. I'll see what is available locally and take it from there. I think about any bagged medium will have shortfalls from time to time, be that gnats or some mould or some unwanted bacteria.

Even with promix, I still add 30 to 40% additional perlite to it for cannabis. I may do what you are thinking of, starting with straight peat and adding my own starter and perlite. I'm using miicrobial mass as well now, at the suggestion of F,N. for microbial growth, I was lucky enough to get a free bottle of it for christmas from the local hydro shop. It's a Canadian made product and F.N. swears by it.

And the girls are green and growing right now so the stress level is at 0. That may change once stretch starts though

Take care Northern neighbor!

 

[Olderfart]

I watched a video a professor in Colorado made about grow medium, and he suggested using vermiculite as when it breaks down, it adds nutrients to the medium. I'm not sure what I will use this spring/summer. I'll see what is available locally and take it from there. I think about any bagged medium will have shortfalls from time to time, be that gnats or some mould or some unwanted bacteria.

Even with promix, I still add 30 to 40% additional perlite to it for cannabis. I may do what you are thinking of, starting with straight peat and adding my own starter and perlite. I'm using miicrobial mass as well now, at the suggestion of F,N. for microbial growth, I was lucky enough to get a free bottle of it for christmas from the local hydro shop. It's a Canadian made product and F.N. swears by it.

And the girls are green and growing right now so the stress level is at 0. That may change once stretch starts though

Take care Northern neighbor!

Green and growing is good!

If you haven't already, have a look at Dr. Bugbee's youtube video on maximizing yield in cannabis. He covers a lot more than the peat mix, but it is worth a look. He knows what he is talking about.

The challenge is that it seems that the exact mix he recommends may have been tailored to his tap water which is hard and a bit high in pH. At this point, I am thinking that a soft water (in my melted snow case, very soft) version might need adjustment of the dolomite and gypsum amendments. If I go this route without finding helpful information, I may just mix up the peat/vermiculite material and test various amounts of dolomite and gypsum to see how they affect pH. The thinking cap is on.

 

[Kyote]

Green and growing is good!

If you haven't already, have a look at Dr. Bugbee's youtube video on maximizing yield in cannabis. He covers a lot more than the peat mix, but it is worth a look. He knows what he is talking about.

The challenge is that it seems that the exact mix he recommends may have been tailored to his tap water which is hard and a bit high in pH. At this point, I am thinking that a soft water (in my melted snow case, very soft) version might need adjustment of the dolomite and gypsum amendments. If I go this route without finding helpful information, I may just mix up the peat/vermiculite material and test various amounts of dolomite and gypsum to see how they affect pH. The thinking cap is on.

That's the guy I was referring to about the vermiculite. I watched a few of his videos. Maybe it was Utah and not Colorado? Anyways, it was that guy.

I use rain water from rain barrels and ph it after adding nutes. Seems snow would be similar? Maybe a few ppms from particulates in the atmosphere. I use baking soda for ph up with the rain water.

I think there are two different types of lime .. one is fast acting and the other is slow acting. There's so much to learn in our golden years :smoking:

 

[Waira]

My wife just reminded me we bought two bales about a year and half ago from a Hydro store that ruined plants/

Magoo and a few others over the last couple years have gotten funky batches of Promix! Exact same thing too, slow, stunty, off-colored seedling, just plain failure to thrive syndrome,... no nute, inoculants or anything else were to blame, proven by him getting a different batch (think he check lots #'s?) and things got back to normal,... OF had a similar issue with the SS#4 as you now see ... both are soilless mediums, and as such with minimal components you'd think bad batches would be near impossible, but it ain't clearly! ...coulda been the lime, or bad mixing, even some shitty peat,...
Kyote brudda, have a look in the Reference section, there's an article there that Eyes on Fire found that sums up the types of limes, and also one on peats...
In a nutshell though, most (rock) limes are mainly CaCO3, variable amounts of MgCO3,... oyster shell is pure CaCO3, some molecular structural differences I think... Dolomite is chemically different from "regular" lime, compounded differently: formula is CaMg(CO3)2 , a very different arrangement indeed. it has more Mg per weight, and is slower to break down because of this altered molecular construction... particle size is everything with any lime, but dolomite especially,... It's plus is that it can last longer, react slower and release less quickly than other typical limes like Ag' lime, shells, etc.... really fine stuff, like powdered will act much faster than course grit as you'd expect,... Soil chemistry, pH in particular, and 'crobes play their role as well, but pH is king here... It's safe on some levels because it can't raise the soil pH above about 7.0, but it sure as shit can make it stubborn to bring down! Worse for peat-based soilless, which works better at a lower pH vs. true soil...
Too much neutral stuff like perlite can mess with other factors in the medium's functional ion exchange capacities... I'm told it's like "watering it down", since perlite is so non-reactive in this sense, and past a point, more aeration is not necessarily better for other reasons too,... Good science went into those mediums, Promix is pretty loaded with perlite as is... I actually started using it for my carnivorous plants instead of pure peat; easier to work with and already airy enough even for them!
Any reason you don't use soil?

 

[Kyote]

Magoo and a few others over the last couple years have gotten funky batches of Promix! Exact same thing too, slow, stunty, off-colored seedling, just plain failure to thrive syndrome,... no nute, inoculants or anything else were to blame, proven by him getting a different batch (think he check lots #'s?) and things got back to normal,... OF had a similar issue with the SS#4 as you now see ... both are soilless mediums, and as such with minimal components you'd think bad batches would be near impossible, but it ain't clearly! ...coulda been the lime, or bad mixing, even some shitty peat,...
Kyote brudda, have a look in the Reference section, there's an article there that Eyes on Fire found that sums up the types of limes, and also one on peats...
In a nutshell though, most (rock) limes are mainly CaCO3, variable amounts of MgCO3,... oyster shell is pure CaCO3, some molecular structural differences I think... Dolomite is chemically different from "regular" lime, compounded differently: formula is CaMg(CO3)2 , a very different arrangement indeed. it has more Mg per weight, and is slower to break down because of this altered molecular construction... particle size is everything with any lime, but dolomite especially,... It's plus is that it can last longer, react slower and release less quickly than other typical limes like Ag' lime, shells, etc.... really fine stuff, like powdered will act much faster than course grit as you'd expect,... Soil chemistry, pH in particular, and 'crobes play their role as well, but pH is king here... It's safe on some levels because it can't raise the soil pH above about 7.0, but it sure as shit can make it stubborn to bring down! Worse for peat-based soilless, which works better at a lower pH vs. true soil...
Too much neutral stuff like perlite can mess with other factors in the medium's functional ion exchange capacities... I'm told it's like "watering it down", since perlite is so non-reactive in this sense, and past a point, more aeration is not necessarily better for other reasons too,... Good science went into those mediums, Promix is pretty loaded with perlite as is... I actually started using it for my carnivorous plants instead of pure peat; easier to work with and already airy enough even for them!
Any reason you don't use soil?

Wow, now there goes my free time Gotta hit the study again!

I don't use soil indoors as I have experienced gnats and such with bagged premix soil such as products. As the tent is in the bedroom, I don't want to risk the bugs coming in. Next thing, i'd have a worm bin under the bed and the dog would be mad at me for taking his hiding spot.

I may try mixing up some soil for this outdoors season. We have a small greenhouse and I watched the temperatures in there last summer. It got hot hot. It has two ceiling vent windows, but no end vent windows and nothing can be changed due to the construction of it. Going to set up a fan and attempt to grow a photo or two in there this year, and would like to go organic with it. See if i can get a Green Poison to finish without any BR problems as I sure like it as a medicine.

Everyone I've talked with here at the hydro store, some old time indoor growers, are the ones who told me to add the perlite for indoors. Outdoors, I found out the medium dried out really fast with the cloth bags exposed to the wind and sun, so any that I grow in cloth bags outdoors this year won't have additional perlite.

F.N. said the same thing about a bad bale of promix. The hydro shop has a local product i might try next.

Honestly, I'm just happy to have these green girls keeping me company for the remainder of winter.

I was this || close to growing turnips

 

[420Forever]

Wow, now there goes my free time Gotta hit the study again!

I don't use soil indoors as I have experienced gnats and such with bagged premix soil such as products. As the tent is in the bedroom, I don't want to risk the bugs coming in. Next thing, i'd have a worm bin under the bed and the dog would be mad at me for taking his hiding spot.

I may try mixing up some soil for this outdoors season. We have a small greenhouse and I watched the temperatures in there last summer. It got hot hot. It has two ceiling vent windows, but no end vent windows and nothing can be changed due to the construction of it. Going to set up a fan and attempt to grow a photo or two in there this year, and would like to go organic with it. See if i can get a Green Poison to finish without any BR problems as I sure like it as a medicine.

Everyone I've talked with here at the hydro store, some old time indoor growers, are the ones who told me to add the perlite for indoors. Outdoors, I found out the medium dried out really fast with the cloth bags exposed to the wind and sun, so any that I grow in cloth bags outdoors this year won't have additional perlite.

F.N. said the same thing about a bad bale of promix. The hydro shop has a local product i might try next.

Honestly, I'm just happy to have these green girls keeping me company for the remainder of winter.

I was this || close to growing turnips

mmm...the main issue, as i see it, is -> ur drivin a car without brakez ppp

 

[Kyote]

This is some great info on lime. i'll leave a link here so I can find it again when I'm not so medicated :smoking:
Thanks @Waira

https://www.autoflower.org/threads/liming-amendments-cc.33323/